Destiny union station, p.1
Destiny: Union Station, page 1
Destiny: Union Station
The universe has plans for Kelly Frank and Joe McAllister, if only it can get them in the same place at the same time.
A Prequel to EarthCent Ambassador
Copyright 2021 by E. M. Foner
One
“In conclusion, I hereto and forthwith tender my resignation to EarthCent, effective immediately. Stop. And furthermore, I wish to state for the record that it’s your loss, not mine. Stop.”
“Do you have to talk out loud while you’re filling out the form?” the clerk at the tunneling telegraph kiosk demanded. “Going by the way you look and smell, I doubt you’ll be able to pay for two words.”
“I’m Kelly Frank, the special assistant to EarthCent’s consul on this miserable excuse for a resort world, and I look and smell this way thanks to my crummy job.”
“I’ve heard that diplomats drink, but I thought they could hold their liquor.”
“I can hold it. A stupid tourist got arrested for passing out on the sidewalk and threw up on me when the local police called the consulate for somebody to come pick him up.”
“If you’re really the assistant to the whatever, why aren’t you using the consulate’s tunneling telegraph?”
“Because I don’t have the key!” Kelly exploded. “Twenty-three months and the consul still treats me like a child. I’ve wasted the last twelve years of my life working for EarthCent and I’ve had it with cleaning up after humans behaving badly on vacation.” She rechecked the message she had laboriously tapped out on the tablet chained to the kiosk and nodded her head grimly. “Just send it to Earth, care of EarthCent.”
“Alright,” the clerk said, pulling the tablet to his side of the counter and tapping the summary icon. “That will be five hundred and sixty-two creds.”
“WHAT!”
“It’s a cred a word, as long as you keep them under ten letters. Haven’t you ever sent a tunneling telegram before?”
“I’ve sent hundreds,” Kelly said. “I just haven’t paid for them myself. I only earn a hundred and forty creds a week.”
Now it was the clerk’s turn to be astounded. “Twelve years on the job and you’re only making a hundred and forty creds a week? You should have quit eleven years ago.”
“I can’t afford five hundred and sixty-two creds. I can’t even afford sixty.”
“How much do you have?”
Kelly fumbled in her purse for her wallet and pulled out a sheaf of eBucks, but the clerk made a cross sign with his index fingers.
“It’s not counterfeit,” she assured him. “Just look up the exchange rate.”
“You can pay in Stryx creds or Thurians,” he said. “Outside of Earth, that stuff is toilet paper. The moneychangers won’t even touch it.”
“Why do you think I’m still carrying it around?” Kelly asked mournfully. She opened the change purse section of the wallet and brought out two five-cred pieces and three single creds. “I have thirteen Stryx creds to last until I get my severance. I’ll be able to afford more then because I have five weeks of vacation pay coming.”
“Five weeks of vacation a year is a pretty good benefit.”
“I haven’t taken a day off in five years.”
“Oh, you really do need to quit that job. Look here,” the clerk said, turning the tablet around so that Kelly could see the page-long message she had composed. “You don’t have to explain your reasons for resigning. Just get it down to thirteen words and you’ll be golden.”
“Do you charge for the stops?”
“We have to, but they aren’t required, and punctuation marks are free.”
“You mean all these years I’ve been writing tunneling telegrams with stops in between sentences I could have been using periods?”
The clerk shrugged. “Everybody else does. Maybe stops are a diplomatic thing.”
Kelly looked at her handful of coins, which represented a half-day’s pay, and then wiped the tablet clean and started again.
“I quit. Kelly Frank.”
“Four creds,” the man said, holding out his hand.
“What if I moved my name to the ‘From’ field?”
“There is no ‘From’ field—only the destination address is free.”
“All right,” Kelly said with a sigh. She passed across one of the five-cred pieces and received a single cred in return. “When will they get it?”
“As soon as I process the transaction. We shoot it up to the satellite, which takes a fraction of a second, and from there it goes to the tunnel controller. Data transmissions through the Stryx tunnels are instantaneous.”
“Do it,” Kelly said. She watched as the clerk performed the necessary actions, and then her face crumpled up and she whispered, “My precious job.”
“Are you okay?” the clerk asked, offering a tissue.
Kelly shook her head, unable to speak. She wandered around the tourist mall like a zombie until ending up in front of her favorite pub and stumbling through the door. “Wine,” she choked out to the blurry woman working behind the bar.
“You look terrible, Kelly,” the bartender said. “Are you sure you want a drink?”
“I want every ounce of alcohol you have in the place, Myka. I just quit my job.”
Myka’s nose crinkled in distaste, and she asked, “Did you throw up on yourself?”
“A tourist threw up on me, it was the final straw. I’ve been on stupid Thuri Minor for almost two years and it’s the worst posting I’ve ever had.”
“Didn’t you tell me once you were on a scout ship that jumped into a war zone and you almost got killed?”
“That was my second assignment for EarthCent, working as a counter for human contract laborers on alien colony ships. I went along on the advance scout and we almost got our heads handed to us, but it was all over in a few minutes. This posting has been two years of grinding humiliation working for a boss who accused me of fraternizing with the enemy when I accepted an invitation to a Thurian reception for alien diplomats.”
“The consul thinks the Thurians are our enemies?”
“He thinks all aliens have it in for us. I don’t understand how somebody like that ever got a job with EarthCent, much less a promotion to consul on a resort world. And he’s been here for decades!”
“Just stick it out and ask for a transfer,” Myka advised for what felt like the hundredth time. “I’ll bet you get promoted to consul at your next posting, and then you’ll be the one making everybody else miserable.”
“I don’t want to make anybody miserable, and EarthCent has a minimum age for consuls,” Kelly said. “If they had told me that when I got recruited, I would have deferred joining until I at least finished college. Maybe even graduate school,” she added, her voice starting to break again. “Now I’m just a washed-up personal assistant from a backward species.”
“What’s the age limit to make consul? I know you’ve told me but I don’t remember.”
“It’s thirty-five for all executive positions, don’t ask me why. I think you can become an acting consul or even an acting ambassador at thirty, but I’ve never heard of it happening.”
“Here,” Myka said, sliding a goblet of the house red in front of her friend. “It’s on me. But what are you going to do now?”
“I don’t know,” Kelly said, the words coming out somewhere between apathy and despair. “I guess I’ll go back to Earth and try to sign up for an alien labor contract. The reason I accepted the EarthCent job when they recruited me was that I wanted to travel the galaxy and represent humanity to aliens. Now I’m worried that at thirty-two no alien contractor will want to hire me.”
“That is a little old to go out as a first-time farm laborer to an ag world, but I’m sure you have plenty of marketable skills,” Myka said. “Hang on a second while I serve that couple at the end of the bar and we’ll make a list.”
“A list,” Kelly repeated, and after taking a sip from the wine, pulled her personal tab out of her purse. She swiped it to life, opened the notepad, and tapped in, ‘My career skills.’ Then she ran out of steam and started watching a video screen in the corner that was showing the Grenouthian news.
“Let me see that,” the bartender said when she returned, spinning the tab on the bar a hundred and eighty degrees. “Enough with the pity party already. You couldn’t come up with anything?”
“Working for EarthCent in the diplomatic track is weird,” Kelly explained. “It’s all soft skills.”
“Those count too. Just from the stories you’ve told me I could list a dozen skills that would make you an attractive hire for any employer on the tunnel network.”
“You’re just trying to make me feel better.” She pushed the tab all the way to the bartender and said, “Name one.”
“Doesn’t get freaked out by artificial intelligence,” Myka tapped into the tab.
“That’s not a skill,” Kelly objected after puzzling out the upside-down text. “It’s the lack of an anti-skill.”
“A what?”
“You know, something that holds a person back. Haven’t you ever read ‘Level Up Your Life’ by Anne Bahir?”
“Isn’t she that pop-psychology guru on Earth who holds those weekend seminars where they don’t let you leave the lecture hall to use the bathroom?”
“It’s serious science,” Kelly said indignantly. “We all have anti-skills that hold us back in life. One of mine is that I don’t speak out in meetings unless I know what I’m talking about. That hurts me professionally because the onl
“Or maybe you’re just lacking a little self-confidence,” Myka suggested.
“I’m plenty confident—I just hate being wrong. And I’ve never liked people who talk loud and push for whatever they want all the time as if their opinions are more important than everybody else’s. Last month, some businessmen who our consul met at an event on Earth when he was on leave, showed up here because the consul promised them a meeting with the Thurian Empress. The palace didn’t even respond to our request, so the consul told the businessmen the Empress didn’t want to see them, like it was their fault. Think of all the time and money they wasted just because he wanted to play the big man in front of the people back home.”
“Empathizes with underdogs,” Myka tapped out on the tab.
“No, that’s another anti-skill,” Kelly protested. “I mean, it’s true, but it doesn’t get me anywhere. The galaxy is a tough place and employers don’t want to hire doormats.”
“You’re hardly a doormat, Kelly. I bet you’d make a great customer service executive, you know? You really care about treating people fairly.”
“I don’t want to spend the rest of my life sucking up to the unhappy customers who nobody else can handle. All of my friends on Earth told me that I was making a mistake leaving college, and my mother is always on my back about getting married before it’s too late to start a family.” She finished her wine and contemplated the empty glass sadly, “Maybe I could get a human resources job in an alien factory that employs human contract laborers. If I took a twenty-year contract, I’d have a half pension at fifty-two, and I’d still be young enough to enjoy traveling.”
“If you’re really going to do this, I suggest getting a job on a Stryx station or a space liner,” Myka said. “Just because you’re quitting diplomacy doesn’t mean you have to give up your dream of traveling and meeting aliens. You know that I got my start in bartending on a Drazen passenger liner, and they visited all over the tunnel network. I can even manage a few words in half a dozen alien languages.”
“You said the aliens didn’t understand you.”
“No, but they appreciate it when you make the effort and it shows in the tips. Besides, I only have a cheap commercial implant and—”
“My implant,” Kelly moaned. “I forgot all about that. EarthCent paid for my diplomatic implant, and I’m so used to understanding what the tunnel network aliens are saying on the news that I was beginning to think I knew their languages.”
“Maybe they’ll forget you have it,” Myka said.
“Not a chance. I’m such an idiot. I should have taken a leave of absence instead of quitting and then tried to fade out of sight.”
“Will they remove the implant here, or do you have to return to Earth?” Myka asked, pouring Kelly another glass of the house red. “At least that way they would have to pay for your travel home, right?”
“The last place I want anybody cutting my skull open is on Earth,” Kelly said. “My implant was put in on Echo Station—we all got routed through there on the way to our first assignment. And now that you’ve brought it up I could probably get work there. Echo supposedly has one of the larger human populations of the Stryx stations, over a million people, so we make up around one percent of the sentients living there. I might find a job as a restaurant hostess or something like that.”
“You’re in here all the time, so you do know a lot about the hospitality business.”
Kelly took the tab back and said, “Hospitality experience,” as she added it to her skills list.
“How much longer are you going to stay on Thuri Minor?” Myka asked. “I have a week’s vacation coming and I was thinking of visiting one of the other islands.”
“I can’t afford it. I’m going to the consulate office manager tomorrow to ask for my severance pay, and then I’ll take the elevator up to orbit and grab the cheapest passage I can find to Echo Station.”
“You don’t have to give them two weeks for notice?”
“No, that’s the one good thing about working in diplomacy,” Kelly said. “When you tell them you’re quitting, they lock you out of your office and change all of the passwords. I hope you don’t have trouble finding a new roommate.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Myka said. “With the turnover in this place, I’ll have somebody new lined up before you reach orbit.”
“Oh.”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean that you’ll be easy to replace, because I’ll really miss you. I just don’t want you thinking you’re creating a financial problem for me.”
“I get it,” Kelly said, and drained the rest of her second glass in one go. “You’re the only thing I’m going to miss about this planet.”
“How about Bernard?”
“I walked in on him sleeping with a girl who looked like she just graduated high school.”
“And you didn’t tell me?” Myka demanded, moving a step to the side to draw two more drafts for the customers at the end of the bar.
“It just happened last night. I was scheduled to work the graveyard shift, but Scott asked to swap with me at the last minute, so I thought I’d surprise Bernard.” She choked out a bitter laugh. “I always thought that catching somebody with their pants down was just an expression.”
“Hold that thought,” the bartender said. She delivered the two drafts, and on her return, pointedly ignored the empty wine glass Kelly had pushed forward. “You quit your job because Bernie-boy was cheating on you?”
“No, it was the drunk tourist and—” Kelly broke off and stared at her friend. “What did I do?”
“You’ll just have to go to the consul and tell him you changed your mind,” Myka said. “What did he say when you quit?”
“I haven’t told him. I sent a tunneling telegram to EarthCent just before I came here.”
“How could you afford one of those?”
“It was only four words.”
“Then it doesn’t count. Just go in tomorrow morning like nothing has changed, and if anybody asks you, say it must have been a prank.”
“Who would spend a cred a word on a prank?” She shook her head slowly. “I can’t go crawling back, Myka. Even if I was overreacting to Bernie cheating on me, my career really is stuck, and the consul does go out of his way to make me miserable. I need to get off this planet.”
“Go over the consul’s head,” Myka urged her. “If you don’t want to do it from here, wait until you get to Echo Station and talk to the EarthCent consul there. You’ve got twelve years in and you always get perfect evaluations.”
“How do you know that?”
“You’ve told me more than once. This is why you should stop at two glasses of wine.”
The tab beeped loudly, and the list of skills was replaced by a screen from the Thurian communications company that EarthCent contracted with for local messaging. The subject line of the new message read, “Your resignation.”
“I can’t look,” Kelly said, pushing the tab back to her friend again. “Tell me what it says.”
Myka let out a deep breath and tapped on the message. “Proceed Echo Station. Stop. EarthCent. Stop.”
“I knew they wouldn’t forget about my implant,” Kelly wailed. “I wonder if I can get the doctors to put in a cheap one while they have my head open.”
“It doesn’t say that they want your implant or that they accepted your resignation,” Myka pointed out. “It just says to go to Echo Station. Maybe you’re being reassigned.”
Kelly brightened up for a moment, but then she shook her head. “Thanks, but if they were giving me a new posting, it would say so.” She got up from her stool, vacillated a moment between heading for the bathroom or the exit, then decided it could wait until she got home. “I’m going to go curl up with a good novel. If I’m asleep on the couch when you get home, don’t wake me. I’ll take you out to a farewell brunch tomorrow if I can get my severance pay.”
Two
“The only damage I found is to the mass converter, and these Frunge troop transports carry spares,” Joe reported to the senior mercenary officer on board. “The hole is smaller than my pinkie, which is why we’re still alive. Of course, if the energy beam hadn’t been so tight, it probably couldn’t have punched through the shields.”
