Ghosts Come Home

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The station seemed to rotate on the screen as Dev Verlain brought the shuttle in, the waiting docks a spiny forest of grappling arms and gantries. He played the throttles as he guided the battered cargo container in front of him. It was his third grab of the day, and he briefly considered making a fourth trip, but in the end the lure of going home to his tiny apartment and Letha won out. He brought the boom mic closer to his lips.

“Approach, 7748 Uniform, inbound with cargo. Request vectors.”

“Roger, Four-Eight Uniform,” a woman’s voice answered. “Computer guidance to commence in thirty seconds.”

“That’s affirm.” Reluctantly, Dev turned control over to the tower. He had been genetically tailored to fly starships, and despite nearly two decades here he still rankled each time the computers took control. He placed his hands in his lap and waited, splitting his gaze between the flight-board and the vista of steel and carbon that made up Oasis. The station was one of the oldest in service, ugly as child’s crude drawing, a thousand sharp facets and angles slipping in and out of the light as the station turned on its axis, forever locked in orbit around its red dwarf primary. It was a nexus for transport to the real colonies light-years away, a refuel point along the way to worlds with names like Seraphim, Allegro, and Novus, worlds with open skies and air scrubbed clean by rain. Worlds Dev Verlain would never see. After so many years fighting the idea, he had at last reconciled himself that the station was, for better or worse, home.

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