Sean-Michael Argo - Carrion Duty

Rhett suddenly became aware of just how beautiful she was and what she represented. Andromeda, like so many others this far out, was a multi-generational spaceborne. Over the centuries the human body began to adapt to the false gravity of starships and stations, and as a result, they developed unique physical features. Andromeda was taller than Rhett, who himself stood at just over six feet, and she had long winnowy features that revealed her elongated skeletal structure. She spoke the station patois, a dialect that developed on bustling stations where multitudes of corporations and cultures mixed. She might leave the station one day, as table girls made good money and were considered a protected class by Port Authority, regardless of what corporation ran any given station. As a registered sex worker she would be able to transfer her license from Andromeda to any other station in corporate space, regardless of her Aegis citizenship. So long as she remained in the black, she could be free and healthy, a true born creature of necrospace.

In her body, Rhett saw the relentless adaptive prowess of humanity, and in her eyes he saw a young woman who still found some joy in this universe, even if every moment of it was earned hard. This wasn’t about the AG16, it never was about the carrion duty, even if he tried to pretend it was for his own sake. The blood on his hands from the Dunhill Massacre would never wash off, no matter how long he stood under that damn shower head, and as she leaned in to probe his interest with a kiss, the vulture knew she wouldn’t have cared. Sex work was like gun work, revealing the best and the worst in people, and it was best to just get on with it.

Rhett returned her kiss and they slowly sank back into bed, the mescal on their shared breath, enjoying each other’s warmth for a brief time as the station around them lumbered through the cold expanse.

On the drift.

Rhett inhaled deeply as he walked into the dimly lit food court of Andromeda Station and his senses were pleasantly assaulted with all manner of aromas.

Open flames were banned by the Port Authority due to how much breathable air they depleted, but there was no prohibition against cooking in the open. Food of every kind roasted, boiled, and fried on electric burners, filled the multi-layered deck with an enticing tangle of smells. Where most other decks were equipped with a variety of aroma-emitters to help mask the scent of unwashed bodies and recycled air, the food court relied on the wares of its vendors to out smell its inhabitants.

The vulture stood on the mid-deck and observed the bustling court for a moment. He had been on a great many stations and orbitals in his time, not only as a vulture but harkening back to his cor-sec days, before T4. This was a franchise station, one of the massive spaceports that were licensed and governed by the Port Authority, but that was home to a multitude of corporate citizenry.

Throughout the universe, corporate citizens, for the most part, only interacted with people not in their corporation when it was time to make trade or make war. Entire generations of people would live their lives in a single sector, sometimes even a single system or planet.

Totalitarian corporate cultures like Helion managed their citizen’s mobility through careful regulation, while Grotto institutional policy made mobility for the average citizen economically impossible. Other, less protectionist corporations like Aegis, Rubicon, and Augur cultivated an engaged and mobile citizenry, even if this approach did not yield the overt human resource power that mega-corps like Grotto or Helion enjoyed.

Andromeda Station was founded by venture capitalists from Aegis, who built the core station and the chop yard. Port Authority for this station was an Aegis backed local government, though other companies and organizations were welcome to set up shop aboard the station, so long as they played by the rules and paid their fees. In corporate culture each accredited citizen was a representative of their corporation as much as a tax paying subject, and that sovereignty was acknowledged universally on franchise stations. Places like Andromeda served as neutral ground, which was both their blessing and their curse, as such stations, by their very nature, could only exist on the fringes of any system. Aegis might own the controlling interest in Andromeda, but the presence of so much unregulated trade and foreign corporate citizens meant that Andromeda was required to maintain a vast distance between it and the more civilized areas of Aegis corporate space.

In other words, it was the perfect place for the people who made their living in necrospace, be they traders, long haulers, gunslingers, or basic scavengers. Fees and taxes flowed back into Aegis coffers without the corporation having to get directly involved.

For Rhett, that meant all manner of food, drink, and affordable company.

Ever since the headhunter bought his sentence, those had been the only things Rhett had felt worth carrying on for. A man with such simple goals fit comfortably into the life pulse of a place like Andromeda Station. Few actively sought a life on the fringe, and unless one was born into this, finding oneself out here was the result of a cascading series of choices, each harder than the next and pushing a person further and further out.

Often the vulture considered that things would have been better if he’d been one of the few cor-sec casualties inflicted by the Dunhills before they were wiped out. That, at least, would have relieved him of the weight he now carried. Every hostile salvage became T4 in his mind eventually, either in the heat of the action or in the shattering come down after the rush. He had never been a suicidal man, unlike several others he had known and lost during his time in the penal colony. Rhett knew that whenever he did meet his end it would be a long time coming and well deserved. It was in his nature to fight for every moment of life, and if he didn’t have the will to end his life he might as well embrace the simple pleasures of it.

He was still reeling from his encounter with the table girl, Andromeda, and the mescal had done its job of taking the edge off of his nerves.

“Calibos!” called a voice behind and above him, and Rhett turned to see Vitrian Holt approaching down a set of stairs, “I’m surprised to see you here, figured you’d be locked in your room with some pretty thing.”

“Your sense of propriety is appalling, Holt, you know that, right?” Rhett shouted back as the pilot walked over to him. “I’m heading down to Tae Mae’s to meet the new guy, but nobody said I had to do it sober.”

“We’ve only been here for eighteen hours and fleet already has Vader’s replacement online,” observed Vitrian, shaking his head in apparent disbelief. “I know you indentured guys are expendable assets, but come on, Vader was a top tier cutter, can’t be too many of those just floating around.”

“Probably just that a headhunter barge was close enough to respond when we cashed the AG16 bounty,” mused Rhett, choosing not to take offense to Vitrian’s comment, as it was common for Aegis citizens aboard the vulture ships to think of themselves as a cut above the indentured scrappers. He might have to put his fist through the pilot’s face one day, but Rhett had learned first-hand just how profoundly one could be punished for harming officers, and the kid was okay in his own way.

“Once we’re fully crewed we’ll be re-activated and have to start catching again,” grumbled Vitrian as he followed Rhett down the stairs towards the lower decks, where the majority of the drinking establishments were. “Ever since the Grotto Reaper strike it seems like we never get the full three days of shore leave we’re supposed to be owed by the contract.”