Chapter Text
From inside the closed, double walled, triple secure air locks space was almost sort of nice. Or that’s what Altair told himself. Was better than the dead planet he’d come from. Humans thought themselves gods if they thought they could bring that red husk of a world back to life. As he’d gotten older, gotten better schooling, Altair knew that’d never happen. At least not in any meaningful lifetime for him. Terraforming would take too long and there was so much universe to see to be stuck on some dead world humans were trying to breathe life into.
Not that he was much better off here. No window. No life. No wind. No sky. No sun. Just his little stand in the wall, one side with two triple secure air locks between the station and the open void of space and the other with a door. Just a door.
Cygnet station was home to one of the biggest mining operations in the inner system. And Altair had been living in the cramped, barely more than a factory floating in the void, for three years. Not his ideal place of existence but it was better than a dead world he supposed. At least the people here were interesting.
One of the triple secure air lock doors hissed, the heavy hand wheel spun and with ease it swung open and in stepped three of the workers.
They weren’t like the miners back home. In sophisticated android suits they were hardly human. These three didn’t even have the normal bipedal stance of a human. One honestly looked like a damn spider. Altair knew him; Robert. Altair did not like him one bit. His six spindly legs freaked him out and his extremely long arms were equally distressing. “Howdy!” Altair called warmly, raising a hand from behind his bar.
“Chum,” one of them, not Robert, called back, raising a hand in return.
They clustered up to the bar, only one of them actually able to sit, the other two didn’t have bodies that functioned with human stools. “I’m guessing shift is over?” Altair asked.
“Yeah. What a fucking waste of time,” Tamar grumbled, all four of his arms folded, the metal of his android body grinding and hissing against each other.
“Oh yeah? What happened?” Altair already knew what they wanted. It was whatever he’d serve them. While technically none of them needed to eat the human run androids preferred to eat real food to power their bio engines than the soylent green stuff the factory gave out and passed as edible. That stuff was barely more than coal with the shape and consistency of firm tofu, and about as tasteless.
“We blew a hole in Alpha Lamia Six looking for more iron. Hit god damn diamond,” Robert said.
“Isn’t diamond good?”
“Not when you’re looking for iron it ain’t!”
Altair just shrugged. “Eh, I guess I don’t know anything. I just make food,” and he went to the fridge to pull out the remade meals. Meals he’d made. With real food. Or as real as you could serve to guys like these miners. He didn’t bother warming them up, just popped the tops and put them in front of the miners. As he did the doors hissed and opened again. “Howdy!” Altair called as more androids entered. All makes and models designed for specific tasks around the mining operations. A big shift must have just ended.
“Chum!” several of them called back, lights dancing across some faces in a way Altair recognized as smiles.
He brought out more containers of food, laying them out on the bar. In a neat line each other miners came, took a container, and found a place to sit, eat, and talk after a day of blasting and digging and dragging huge amounts of ore and rock around. Altair wasn’t sure they could taste what he made but he’d never had any complaints. The humans who ate his food said it tasted good so he must have been doing something right. His little stall was very quickly filled with androids coming off their shift, talking, eating (which was more like pouring the food down a hole to their bio reactor but Altair was about to disagree with them), and being loud. As some left, having finished, they’d give the reader by the door a smack and Altair would hear a chime from the mid room. Money transferred. Good enough for him.
The first round of androids came, got their bio fuel, talked, paid, and left. As they did more came in. Shifts weren’t small on the Cygnet.
He was just waiting for his favorite android to come in. He usually came in last, when most others had left. He liked it quieter. Altair didn’t mind.
True to form as the crowd was starting to thin one of the air locks hissed and opened and in stepped probably the most humanoid android of the bunch. Two legs, two arms, a head, and built like a bull dog. He had a single horizontal light strip across the front of their head that changed colors. In the years Altair had been here he’d learned what all the different colors meant. Or he’d hope so. Foreman Sigma-17 was his favorite android.
The foreman came over and sat down at the bar in one of the unoccupied seats. “Howdy,” Altair said, smiling at him.
“Howdy,” the foreman said, his light strip was a pleasant blue color. “I’m right hungry if that’s all well with you, chum.”
“Of course. What else do you think I am but all your’s lunch lady,” he cast a look at the androids around and they buzzed for laughter or made passable laughing sounds. The foreman could make a laughing sound. Altair dug in his stock fridge and pulled out a container he had a little note taped to. This one was specifically for Foreman Sigma-17. If he thought about it too much Altair felt silly cooking an extra special meal for an android who he wasn’t sure could taste, and certainly didn’t chew. He just didn’t think about it like that.
“We’d be a lot grumpier without ya, Altair,” the foreman said fondly as Altair turned around.
“Pft, ain’t that the truth. Sigma-3 and 4 and their crew would have mutinied by now if Altair wasn’t out here treatin’ us like decent folk,” someone in the room called.
“Ahhh, it’s nothing,” Altair said awkwardly, rubbing the back of his neck as he put the foreman’s meal on the counter. “You certainly pay more often than my human customers.”
“Heh, blood bags ain’t shit,” someone grumbled. “Well, other than you I mean Altair. You’re an alright blood bag-
“Shut the hell up Jacob, you’re acting more a fool than usual,” someone had bent the awkward android’s head back to look at the opposite wall. “Stop embarrassing the crew with your shitty chatter.”
“Then stop fucking with my head!” Jacob cried, yanking his head back straight.
“Enough,” the foreman said calmly. “Take the bickering outside. You know no fighting in here.”
“Yeah Sigma,” they both grumbled and went back to what they were doing.
“It’s alright. I know what Jacob was getting at,” Altair said to the foreman.
“Still ain’t right to talk about you like that. Jacob’s just pissy his sentence got extended.”
“What? No. Why?” Altair frowned, leaning on the bar across from the foreman.
“Bad behavior,” was all the foreman said.
“Damn. How long?”
“Six more months.”
“Yikes,” Altair grimaced. As he did the foreman took off the front plate of his face. Under it was just a hole. Altair looked away. He did not like watching the androids eat. The foreman dumped the entire contents of the container down the hole and put the front of his face back on.
“Amazing as always,” the foreman said.
“You can’t even taste it,” Altair accused.
“Sayonara chum!” some androids called to Altair as they opened the inner airlock door to leave.
“Sayonara!” Altair called back, raising a hand.
“I don’t need to taste it to know it’s delicious,” the foreman said. “It also burns longer than that crap they give us in rations, meaning it’s got fat, protien, and carbs in it. Which is more than I can say for the fuel bars,” his light bar briefly flickered orange like an annoyed, momentary, scowl.
“Well I’m glad you like it,” Altair said. “Though I’m sure I could serve you guys slop and you’d prefer it over the fuel bars,” he chuckled.
“Ain’t that the truth.”
“Altair,” someone interrupted them. Altair was leaning pretty far across the bar and realized he was doing it. He flushed and stood up properly. “Could I get another round?”
“You pay for your first round?” he rose his eyebrows at them.
“I’m hurt you’d even ask. I did,” they said.
Altair still checked his records as he got another food container. “Really Arno? Because it says here you haven’t paid yet,” he held the containing up but not within reach of the miner android.
“C’mon Altair. You know I’m good for it,” Arno complained. He was a logistic android. Looked almost like a bird, or what Altair assumed a bird looked like. He’d never seen a bird in person. But like a large bird, like a stork, or a heron. He flew around, made sure everything ran smoothly, things got where they were supposed to go, he didn’t do a lot of mining himself.
“Pay first, then you can get a second,” Altair wasn’t sympathetic to his complaining. He knew a single android could eat his entire stock no problem or questions asked. He also expected them to pay for it. He’d been too nice the first few months he’d been on the Cygnet and it had cost him a huge chunk of his savings from buying ingredients to feed people and androids who didn’t pay. He knew the androids could afford one of his meals every shift. But a second? And Arno wouldn’t try anything funny with his foreman around. All the miners knew to be on their best behavior around foremen. They talked to actual humans and could get them put into new shells and better jobs. The foreman had told Altair Arno had kissed ass into a logistic shell but was shit at logistic.
Arno made an annoyed noise, puttered over to the scanner by the doors and bought the first round. Then he left. The foreman made a noise as close to a snort as he could that was more like the sound of grinding metal. “Figured,” he muttered.
Altair put the container away. “I dunno who he thinks he’s fooling,” Altair scoffed.
“Logistics try and get away with everything,” someone next to the foreman said. “Think because they got that sleek shell they can pull off whatever shit they want,” both he and the foreman made a weird electronic noise Altair knew was a scoff.
“Maybe with your bosses but it seems he hasn’t noticed, I’m not your boss.” The few androids who heard that made their versions of laughter.
“Thankfully. You’re much nicer than them,” the foreman said, leaning hard on the bar. The light bar across his face was a different shade of blue, almost purple.
“And cook better too,” someone called. More android laughter.
The bar emptied slowly until it was just Altair and the foreman. It was shift change soon and he was about to get a whole new group of androids in here. Foreman Sigma-17’s crew was just on an extended break while another crew unloaded their tons of ore they’d gotten from the asteroid. Altair leaned against the bar, trying to be casual. “Did you need anything else, foreman?” Altair asked.
“I could think of a few things. Unfortunately, nothing you can help me with,” the foreman said.
Altair frowned. “Like what?”
“Unless you got full pardon papers there ain’t much for what I’m thinking,” the foreman said, sarcastic but also serious. That brought Altair up and he was confronted with the fact that he was technically flirting with a dangerous man. A convicted felon who’d done something so bad they’d been shelled.
Altair sucked his teeth. He wasn’t that bad though. “Sorry, can’t help you with that. Maybe if I knew what you were shut in for?” he teased. Some androids he knew why they’d been shelled. Murder, human trafficking, treason, caught on the wrong side of strong politics on Earth, Mars, or the colonies, battery, large scale theft. The foreman had never said. He kept his past close to his chest. Not like some of the androids who were keen to wax their sob stories to any sympathetic ear. Luckily Altair never had to deal with any of the really twisted ones. They weren’t welcome by others of their own kind as it was, and certainly not in Altair’s cantina.
The light across his face flickered in amusement. Blue, then green, then yellow, and back to blue. “Maybe one day,” he said.
“It can’t be that bad,” Altair said.
“What I did wasn’t. The shit show around it was,” the foreman said.
Altair wanted to ask more but the door opened. On automatic he perked up and called, “Howdy!” to the new shift of androids coming in.
“Chum!” they called back. No less than seven came in quick intervals, meaning they were waiting in line. The foreman shifted in his seat but also didn’t leave.
Altair left him to go service the new androids. He looked over when another foreman came and sat next to his favorite one. The difference in them was only that their glowing light across their face was pure red. As he walked past them to get more meals he heard his foreman give a curt, “Sigma-3,” in greeting.
“Sigma-17,” was the equally tense response. Altair didn’t like that much.
He quickly handed out the meals to Sigma-3’s crew before going back to the foreman with Sigma-3’s meal. “I should be getting on,” the foreman said, his light had changed to an annoyed orange. Guess Sigma-17 and Sigma-3 didn’t get along. This was the first time Altair had seen them in the same place. “We’re almost fully unloaded.”
Sigma-3 scoffed, “Took their sweet time huh?”
“We had a lot of cargo,” the foreman said shortly.
“Right,” and Sigma-3 took off their face to pour Altair’s meal down the hole in his visage.
“Your crew is probably wondering where you got off to,” Altair said helpfully, not looking at Sigma-3. The two needed to be separated.
“Yeah,” the foreman said, annoyed still at Sigma-3. “I’ll see you after shift,” he said right to Altair. Altair froze and felt all weird and bubbly in his stomach.
“S-sayonara,” he stammered out in a dumb, mechanical way. Briefly the light shifted purple before the foreman turned around and left, paying on his way out.
Sigma-3’s ground metal in an annoyed noise. “You better stay on your toes with that one, Altair,” he said.
“What?” Altair came back to reality.
“You know what Sigma-17 got shelled for? Huh?”
“No,” he admitted.
“Killed five men in cold blood,” and Altair stared at the red light of his eye. “Aw, he never tell you?” he said in a mean tease.
“Sigma get the fuck out of my bar,” Altair growled.
“Or what blood bag?”
“Or I’ll have you shell locked out of this entire sector. Won’t be hard. Just tell security you were threatening me.”
Sigma-3 got up and towered over Altair, his red light blazing. “Watch it, blood bag,” he growled.
Altair glared back up at him. “I’m not the one shelled. I dunno what I gotta watch. Unless you like being in there?” Sigma-3 made an angry noise by grinding metal together. “You touch me you get everyone of your crew banned from the bar, not even by me. Security won’t let anyone in here.”
Sigma-3 growled and stomped to the door, nearly broke the scanner to pay for his meal, and left. The miners had been watching. “Damn Altair, you got balls of solid steal standing up to Sigma-3 like that!”
Altair just shrugged. “What’s he actually going to do to me? He knows he fucks up he gets shelled back to a grunt, all privileges revoked. He can be a shit bag to you; not to me,” he said smugly. There was still some sounds of awe at what he’d done before they died down and went back to finishing their meals and relaxed talk before their shifts started again.