Disclaimer: Bleach is not mine, the characters, names and related material all belong to Tite Kubo.
Rated M: violence, language, adult content, Newtonian and relativistic physics, seasoned with lemons and served in space.
Edit: minor word change. Thanks for spotting it.
Chapter 2
Ichigo walked quietly down the long hall, his footsteps the only sound in the empty storage facility. The first order of business, catching up with friends, had been accomplished and now he was on to his second. Hands in his pockets, he ran his fingers over the key in his palm before looking back up to check number over the nearest locker. It was down this hall somewhere. Walking on, he reviewed his limited options on Karakura station.
Stay on dad's ship or find my own place? Staying on the ship was definitely out of the question, he had spent far too much time crammed inside that metal box that he wasn't about to do it again willingly.
Getting my own place requires money and money requires a job. He sighed as he reviewed his marketable skills. While he had earned respectable grades over the course of his education, he didn't have any experience in any job field he could think of.
"Well, I guess that's not true," Ichigo said to himself as he finally found his storage locker. "I suppose I could be a pilot." He mentally groaned at the thought of trading one metal box for another after just arriving at the station. Grumbling at his lack of options, he swiped his hand against the lock. A whir and click later, the door swung partially open. A notice appeared in his vision asking if he wanted to continue to rent the container. He flicked a finger at the 'terminate occupancy' option and watched the key to the locker disappear from his keyring. A final notice appeared saying something about removing his possessions from the locker within 24 hours. He waved it away irritably as he slid the door open wide and stepped inside. Stooping and brushing the dust from the front of the old hover bike with care, he let a rare smile slip onto his face. Though several years out of style, Ichigo preferred the classic lines of his SHN-P0 to the molded and stylized newer models. After blowing more dust away and checking the power levels, Ichigo attempted to start the engine only to have it sputter and whine. Nonplussed, he pulled his shoulder bag over his head and set it down, the tools inside clanging together. He pulled his jacket off and hung it from one of the handles before kneeling down to take a look at the engine.
A few hours later, face streaked with grime, hands raw and his back lathered in sweat, Ichigo eased the bike from the storage locker and into the long hall before closing and locking the door. Engine purring smoothly, the old bike seemed eager to get back on the transit lanes around the huge station. He slung the bag of tools across his shoulder and pulled the helmet down over his head, swinging a leg over the saddle of the bike and thumbing the parking dampener to off. Another genuine smile found its way to his face as Ichigo lightly twisted the throttle of the bike, welcoming the lurch and tug of real inertia as he was sent zipping down the storage hallway.
Ichigo eased the bike out onto one of the station's transit lanes, roaring along with the afternoon traffic. The station was so massive that foot traffic was unfeasible for cross-station travel. While there was a sophisticated and capable automated mass transit system in place, people still like to drive themselves along the enormous triple helix of the central loop and the numerous branching transit lanes weaving off into the further arms of the station. It was this that Ichigo was banking on, the fact that no matter how intelligent and nuanced automatic piloting systems were, people still preferred human driven cars, human voices over the comms, and humans at the flight controls of their precious and exceedingly expensive spacecraft, just in case anything went wrong.
Ichigo gunned the engine, his smile fading as his took the transit lane that looped near the Masaki's berth. He was going to have to stay aboard at least a few more days while he looked for someone, anyone, in need of a pilot. He parked the bike in a space down the causeway and thumbed off the engine. Swinging his leg over the seat and pulling off the helmet, Ichigo glanced up to the docking ring landing and let his scowl deepen on his face. While a few of the other airlocks were occupied and of those, only a few people made use of them, the Masaki's airlock had a long line of people waiting patiently to get into the clinic.
Sighing, he ran a hand through his hair, mussing back up the spikes pushed down by his helmet. He briefly considered his odds at cutting through the line, using his status as ship's pilot to smooth any ruffled patients, but decided against it. Instead, he hung the helmet on the handle of the bike, locked it down with flick of his finger, and picked a direction to walk in. Meandering along the causeway, Ichigo noted how the station had changed but still remained the same. Different shops, same things for sale, different restaurants, same mixture of scents in the air. He let his eyes glaze over as he walked, music playing through his neural link and his hands in his pockets. Something tugged at the edges of his conscious awareness, and not having anything better to do, he allowed it to set his path through the station.
Ichigo eventually found himself nearly alone down one of the older and darker sections of the station, the hallways getting progressively narrow and low as he continued. He saw a flicker of movement ahead of him and stopped, cut the music with a gesture and sharpened his senses. For a moment he thought he had seen the shadow of a person skim across the far wall. Peering closer, he moved cautiously ahead a few more steps, then crossed his arms and rolled his eyes at himself. He rounded the corner and found himself looking out of a wide viewport window. The shadows of huge freighters and smaller escort craft flickered along the walls. Below him, Ichigo could see the huge expanse of the Rukongai Asteroid Belt curving out into space like a gigantic transit lane made of slowly floating mountains. Far in the distance he could see the skeleton of the planet Rukon, its bottom half torn away in what must have been a cataclysmic impact. Just beyond it was the Iron Moon, an enormous sphere of iron and nickel that still orbited Rukon's wreckage. Turning away, Ichigo headed back the way he came and wondered if the line out the front of the Masaki would be shorter by now.
It wasn't.
Teeth grinding in frustration, Ichigo felt his fingernails digging into his clenched palms as he surveyed the docking ring's landing where the ship was docked. If anything the line was longer than it had been an hour ago. Snorting with annoyance, Ichigo took a straight line path across the causeway and down to a bar he knew would have computer terminals he could use. Slipping in through the door he spotted the bank of small, glowing terminals along the rear wall. He mumbled a greeting to the bartender who apparently recognized him as he walked quickly over a vacant terminal. Sighing, he flicked his fingers across the tiny screen while reaching up and rubbing the back of his neck. He hated to use the wireless link with a bar terminal but there was no way he'd touch the hardwire. All this just to look for a job, he thought to himself as he paid the uplink rental fee and had it establish a connection.
I must look like an idiot, he thought. Ichigo turned around and leaned his back against the cabinet the terminal sat in, trying to ignore the buzzing, tingly sensation along the back of his neck. He put his elbow along one of the metal railings of the cabinet and the tingly sensation immediately lessened. It took Ichigo a half hour of searching through the job postings on the station's official pilot roster board and another half hour flicking through the private companies also looking for pilots to find a handful of decent and reputable positions he felt he was qualified for. By then end of it his neck was numb from the tingling and his eyes were red and dry. After posting his credentials and experience summary to the few openings, Ichigo thankfully terminated the uplink and watched all the glowing, translucent screens hovering in his field of vision flicker and wink out of existence.
Ichigo stopped briefly in the bathroom to splash some water on his face, wiping away some of the grit before rubbing his eyes and moving over to the bar. Collapsing into one of the seats he promised himself he'd buy a better neural processor and ocular implants once he could afford it. The bartender moved down to stand in front of him, casually wiping a glass with a towel.
"Afternoon Ichigo, can I get you anything?"
Ichigo blinked to clear his eyes and peered up at the man before him. "Mizuiro?"
"Here I was thinking you've forgotten my name," he said with a smile.
"Give me a little credit," Ichigo smirked. "Oh, that terminal has a bad ground by the way." He indicated the bank he was previously standing at.
"Really? That's odd, I just had it fixed last week," Mizuiro replied, brows furrowed slightly as he looked over to it.
"It's not a big deal, just annoying."
"I'll look into it. You want anything to drink? Take the edge off the feedback?"
Ichigo's scowl darkened at his old friend. "Water, please."
Mizuiro laughed before setting down the glass in his hand and putting a jug of ice cold water on the bar beside it. "I knew it, I had this all ready for you."
Ichigo sat in the bar and listened to Mizuiro run through most of the interesting news that had happened while he was off station. As a bartender, Mizuiro was in a unique position to glean information from a myriad of sources, all of which he would weave into a rich tapestry of intrigue and suspense. Ichigo guessed that it made him pretty popular with the patrons as he sipped his water and asked appropriate questions and made logical leaps to keep the story flowing. The eloquent bartender wove a description of the fluid and often volatile socio-political landscape of Karakura station and its effect on the different trade unions and shipping companies. Amazed, Ichigo asked why Mizuiro tended a bar in the commercial ring of the station instead of putting his knowledge to use directly.
Mizuiro shrugged. "I like what I do and the boss appreciates me, can't really ask for more than that."
Ichigo nodded and Mizuiro slipped down the bar to other customers. He rolled the glass around in his long fingers, watching the sweat bead against the sides and smear against the fake wood grain of the bar. He took one last sip before standing up and heading for the door, giving Mizuiro a brief passing wave before leaving. The docking ring landing at the clinc's airlock had mostly cleared, the last few patients waving back at a smiling Isshin and a cheerful Yuzu. Ichigo walked up the steps, slipping to the side to let an elderly couple pass, before putting his hands in his pockets and striding up to the airlock.
"Ichi-nii!" Yuzu chirped, happy to see him.
His father's eyes narrowed and he moved to block his son's path. "Coming from a bar? What were you doing there, Ichigo?"
Yuzu gasped, elation draining from her face. "Ichigo..."
"Relax, I went there to use the station's network. What do you think I went there for?"
"What's wrong with the ship's network connection?" Isshin asked, eyebrow raised.
"There were hundreds of people out here, I couldn't get onto the ship to use it," Ichigo replied, teeth clenched. He sublimated his indignation at having to justify himself.
"Did you have anything to drink?" Isshin asked, deathly serious, a stark contrast to his usual self.
"Just. Water. I can handle myself just fine."
Holding his stern gaze for a moment longer, Isshin cracked a smile and clapped a hand to his son's shoulder. "Good boy, I knew it all along."
Ichigo, suddenly in a foul mood, slipped past his sister and father, stepped over the mooring gate, went through the airlock and down the short hall that led to the clinic. The ship itself was deceptively large, the bulk of its interior space devoted to a modest but fully capable medical bay equipped to handle nearly every injury and illness a person could get. Ichigo took the familiar route through the clinic, stopping to check the power draw levels on a couple of medical diagnostic systems, frowning, and then heading towards engineering instead of his cabin. The power plant on the Masaki was extremely touchy, its refusal to cycle cleanly even after years of tinkering was something Ichigo took personally. If left running too long without a manual cycle, minor fluctuations in the current from the power plant would invariably become progressively worse. These tended to take their toll on his father's more delicate medical instruments and his own navigation, astrometrics and maneuvering control systems.
'Engineering' was a term he used loosely, as it mostly consisted of a single hallway down in the bowels of the ship with a low ceiling accessed through two blastdoors and a short stairway made of metal grating. The two huge reactors and engines sat on either side of the hall, each one extending above the ceiling and below the floor, complete with service crawl spaces, neural link hardwire jacks at regular intervals and system display screens at key service points around the engines. Ichigo smirked at how out of date the entire thing was. Modern ships incorporated neural collars that boosted the gain on wireless reception even through all this metal, freeing them from having to use hardwires and removing the power waste of displays and terminals.
Ichigo walked down to the other end of the hall where the ship's power plant was installed. Ichigo sighed deeply at it, rested an elbow on one of the engines and leaned casually against the bulkhead. He flicked open one of the lidded ports and drew a long cord from its coiled spool. Telling himself again that he'd buy a better one once he had some more money, he laid the blocky rectangular connector against the top of his hand. Snapping into place, he felt the connector lightly squeezing against his skin, the small magnets holding the hardwire firmly in place. He tapped out his connection code on the panel of the power plant and instantly the power reading levels, reactor monitoring outputs, electricity usage statistics and the power plant central control console bloomed into his vision, all quietly hovering in space. Ichigo tapped out the command sequence to manually cycle the power current one-handed, his fingers flicking through air, touching keys only he could see. Suddenly, the high humming pitch of the power plant dropped to a low thrumming vibration he could feel through his boots.
Finished, he detached the hardwire block from his hand and gave it a quick tug, letting the spool draw up the wire until it was snugly back in its housing. Ichigo flipped down the lid and blinked his eyes at the fuzzy after-images of the control windows. He walked back down the hall towards the stairs before something caught his eye out the rear viewport. Another antiquity, the engineering viewport was set between the engine exhausts and could polarize to 90% opacity under full engine burn, still providing both light and a means of visually monitoring the engine output. However, while docked with the engines offline it was crystal clear, affording a unique view of the huge sweep of the Karakura docking rings. This side of the station was barely facing into the light, all the moored ships and station angles throwing long, dark shadows out across the surface. The light glinted off the planes of the station, making it look brilliantly bronze instead of dull gray.
It was then he noticed it. A small, almost tiny ship floating unmoored and still, not more than a hundred meters away. Interest piqued, Ichigo leaned closer to the viewport, peering down at the little ship. Its graceful lines were smooth and sleek, its paneling done in blacks and pale whites. Afforded an almost top-down angle on the ship, Ichigo had a clear view through its canopy, and to the girl inside. She was floating around the cockpit, squeezing her way over the front cockpit seat so she could reach the rear one. Apparently satisfied after a few moments, she slipped back to the front cockpit seat and strapped herself into the harness. He watched her pause a moment before glancing up through the canopy, looking right into his eyes.
Her posture froze in surprise for a second before she tapped a sequence on a control panel, darkening the canopy to near black. A burst of blue-white light surged from her ship's exhaust as she cycled up her engines. The little ship pivoted in place and sped away, a pale streak against the starry blackness.
Ichigo leaned closer to the viewport, almost putting his face against it to try and catch a glimpse of the fading ship. "No way you can race around like that this close to the station," he muttered to himself, "Colonial Navy would be all over you." Nothing else was moving outside this section of the docking ring though, no pale blue navy striker craft racing after her, nothing. Ichigo toyed with the idea of poring over the passive sensor logs to see just how fast she sped away until he realized he'd get too much interference from heat blooms from the ships and the mass of the station.
Brows drawn together in a more pensive scowl than usual, Ichigo made his way out of engineering and headed towards his cabin. Pulling off his coat and throwing on his bunk, Ichigo sat at his small desk and flipped on his terminal. Another symptom of how out of date the ship was were its reliance on actual display systems on the bridge, engineering and in each cabin. Not that Ichigo minded since using it meant he didn't have to use his link and implants, but it reinforced the fact that the Masaki was his father's ship and he was never going to change her.
He began rifling through the station's public ship manifest, trying to find a make or model on the little vessel that he had just seen. An hour later and with no results, he gave up. Leaning back in his seat he dropped his chin onto his fist and glared at the display. He had memorized the subtle lines of the ship, the smooth white planes of the ailerons and the sculpted cowling enclosing the engines yet the database had nothing matching it. Sighing, he closed the query window and filed the memory away to the back of his mind.
He brought up the notifications he had on his applications, finding a unsurprisingly large number of rejections. Shrugging it off, Ichigo knew that piloting even smaller ships took years of experience and lists of qualifications that he didn't have, and the background check results he didn't want. He culled all the rejections and lined up three possible positions that had expressed a minor degree of interest in him as a pilot. Picking one at random, he brought up their return contact information and established an audio connection. He leaned back in his chair, letting the thought of getting off the Masaki warm up his voice as he introduced himself to the receptionist.
