Credit Rush OutPost Krone (2 page)

Not bothering to reply, Charlie just kept on staring at the credit counter on the bottom of the screen. He had to make sure he was paid in full; his obsession for credits took over everything. After a couple of minutes, the counter had stopped and the credit balance displayed, Charlie was more than pleased with the final amount he had incurred.

“Well, that was one hell of a poker game. I must have placed a hard bet to begin with,” he scoffed and then stood up next to the bed causing the holographic screen to disappear.

Walking over to the nearby table, he decided to grab a bottle of water from the fridge. He was dehydrated and he drank fast before taking a quick break to swallow some painkillers.

“You drink too much, Charlie. How you manage to dig out there with no energy and focus at the same time I’ll never understand,” said the woman.

“Don't you worry about that, I’ve been doing it long enough. Besides, there are only a few of us in the same job on this barren planet,” replied Charlie.

He turned his back to her and grabbed the water bottle, taking in another drink to quench his thirst.

“Orlan? That’s your name is it… well, your human name?” he asked, as the water dribbled down his chin.

“You don't remember from last time? You really do need to quit drinking,” she replied as she placed her evening dress back on.

“Oh, I remember alright,” Charlie replied.

He walked to Orlan, reached for the zip at the back of her dress, and slowly fastened it. His hand touched her soft skin, and he rubbed his fingertips around each soft spot between her shoulders.

“Stop it, please…” she gasped as he tilted his head letting his lips work their way along the surface on her skin.

“Now this is what I love about your alien kind; you have more soft spots then any human woman I know,” said Charlie, pausing for a brief second.

Turning around to face him and laughing, she moved her fingers in his hair and pulled him closer when they were interrupted by a buzzing noise from the side of the kitchen table. Charlie turned around, grabbed his boxer shorts and shirt from the end of the bed, and quickly put them on.

“Who is it, Charlie?” said Orlan.

Charlie picked up the pager and studied it; it was his work. New areas of Kromtic had been detected on the north western side of the planet and they had a new contract ready for him,

“New job for me; it looks like I should be in the credits yet again," Charlie said.

“It's time for me to get going to my job too. I have to meet a client later and it's nearly dawn,” replied Orlan as she made her way towards the door of Charlie's apartment.

“Come on; don't be like that. We can still have some fun; I got a couple more hours to kill,” Charlie replied, leaning back against the wall.

“I don't care. You won me the second time round and that’s enough. You have your credits so we can call it quits,” Orlan replied. Her eyes flashed from blue to a dark green colour in a split second as she shot him a look.

Grabbing her high heels from the floor she then made her way out the door and left.

“Well… okay, that was quick; I suppose Flecs are more honest than humans,” Charlie said referring to Orlan's race. Flecs were illegal immigrants on Outpost Krone; the planet was heaving with the pale skinned foreigners. Flecs were a unique kind of shape-shifter—the physical build of the body did not change, but eye and hair colour could change in appearance many times over. Charlie didn’t care as long as they were the female kind. To him, the shape-shifting female Flecs were better in bed than human females.

Some more pain killers were needed as the headache still buried itself deep inside his head. Charlie emptied the last of the painkillers into his mouth before throwing the bottle onto the kitchen floor. Outside, the two suns were starting to rise over the lunar horizon, daylight slowly making its presence known.

“That’s one good thing about living on this rock, the sunset is always welcome,” said Charlie as he slid his canopy door open.

The warm breeze from outside hit him in the face, each of the sun's in the skyline glowed upon the rocky craters below to give the surface a glistening warm orange colour.

“Still lots of fortune out there to keep me going; hell, I could retire early if I hit the dig big time,” he said, leaning over the balcony. Below him, the lunar traffic passed by.

“Suckers,” shouted Charlie as he looked on. The usual transporters could be seen carrying people to work; the majority of them were working under slave labour contracts for the big corporations. The workers under those contracts were less fortunate; they didn’t start off with any credits at all. Even if they did, once they ran out that was it.

The contract workers spent most of the day keeping the furnaces burning in exchange for living space in the slums on Krone. Most of them had been transported to the planet as an alternative to spending their final days living as outcasts, or being deprived of oxygen within the ever thinning atmosphere back on Earth.

Only powerful wealthy citizens now inhabited the once blue planet; Old Earth was almost gone and along with it, the once seemingly normal civilization. The higher classes lived in domes in remote areas away from the harm of the elements and human dangers.

“Shit, this heat is building up early today,” said Charlie as he glanced at the temperature gauge fixed on the wall.

It was already pushing past 37 degrees Celsius and rising fast every couple of minutes. A booming sound could be heard in the distant hills on the lunar surface as the temperature warning system activated.

The atmosphere had sprung to life early and with the rising temperature it was far better to be inside. Charlie slid the patio doors shut behind him and went to get dressed before he read his work brief. He could enjoy time outside after his work was done and it cooled off, but now it was time for business.

Opening one of the four lockers he had in his apartment, he decided on which clothes to wear. He chose a dark blue coverall with the mining logo stitched onto the left shoulder and his name sown in red below it-Charlie, Digger 24. The coverall was comfortable as always which was good for him. The amount of alcohol and junk food he had consumed over the years did him no favours yet he still managed to get away with looking good because of the loose coveralls.

Charlie flicked a button on the side of his pager and sat down on the sofa. A holographic screen appeared in the middle of the room and, adjusting the pager with his hands, he enlarged the corners of the screen to get a better view. Charlie tapped the button again and an image of a man appeared on the screen. He was dressed in a business suit, the corporate boss of Kromtic division—not just on Krone, but on other systems also.

“I hope you are well, Charlie, and you received the message fine,” replied the voice on the screen.

Charlie rested back with his arms stretching while watching the screen and listening to the message. He had heard all the corporate banter before and just wanted to get on with the job. After a couple of minutes of verbal junk echoing around the room, he skipped over to the last couple of minutes of the message as he always did.

“The credit reward for this work is twenty thousand. We have sent scout machines across to the north-western part of the surface and are certain there is a good area of Kromtic there to be found,” concluded the corporate male with a smug smile as the message ended and the screen shut down.

Charlie was not too impressed. The credit reward was lower than his last digging job, but he had to remain focused; he needed his reward.

The two suns outside bore down onto the towers and sometimes it was too dangerous to even venture out of the complex at this time because of the extreme heat. Charlie sat down to eat his breakfast at the kitchen counter, flicking his fingers against a mini holographic screen. He was shifting through graphs of data to plan the density of the ground where he would be digging. An alert appeared in the right hand corner, it warned of extreme heat on the eastern side of the planet today and the cancer rate was at least eighty percent.

“Damn I hate percentages, they’re getting higher every time,” he muttered between mouthfuls.

“Well, they better work harder on those furnaces; this atmosphere must be thinning,” said Charlie as he emptied the remaining contents of his bowl into a nearby waste compactor.

The android had awoken from his slumber and the electrodes wired into the back of his metal skull started to light up to send pulses into the android’s body.

The half metal/half organic android, Richard, was chosen by Charlie when he first started digging as a full time occupation.

Richard’s eyelids started to flicker then opened fully as his crystal blue eyes came to life while the data feed from Charlie's apartment came through the network interface.

“Sir, thank you for considering me again this time round,” said Richard sitting upright in his chair at the controls.

“Hello again, Richard; did you have a happy downtime?” replied Charlie flicking the comms switch.

“As you know, sir, I hardly notice any difference apart from my wake up call. The battery re-charge appears to have gone fine this time,” Richard replied.

“Nine months work this time my friend. The corporation has advised me there’s a fresh dig on the north-western side,” said Charlie.

He was punching the last piece of the information through to his android via the data feed.

Richard acknowledged this and pressed some buttons on top of the control panel.

“That's it, the last of it coming through now,” said Charlie through the intercom. Before shutting off the audio switch, he finished with, “Careful you don't mess those plot coordinates up, there’s a bag of major credits riding on this one.”

“Sir… Sir…?” said Richard after he had lost the signal for the apartment.

“Charming; I take it we will see each other tomorrow.” Richard frowned as he slowly detached the data tubes from the back of his skull. Looking up towards the screen in front of him, the countdown had reached zero to indicate that the download was complete so he shut down Until Charlie would call on him again.

Charlie was finished with what he needed to do in his apartment. All the data had been transferred so he still had a bit of time to sit around and do nothing until it was time to leave. Scratching his head, he decided there was some hacking that had to be done—his favourite hobby.

The amount he had gained over the years would have surely bought him a way out of his crummy apartment, but he had debts to pay off. He owed money to various gangs back on Earth; they had been his ticket to survival. .

Over the years overdue payments to gangs back on Earth started to add up, if he had not escaped he would be with the others out there, powering the furnaces day and night or even worse.

Charlie was smuggled on board a ship with others carrying atmospheric equipment. It had stopped for refuelling on a tanker rig; he had paid someone off to get him on-board their ship and a passage to the Krone system and was lucky to get away with it.

“Right; let’s make some money,” said Charlie as he brought the holographic screen back to life.

“Anyone got some tidy accounts around here? There must be some rich pickings,” said Charlie, growing impatient—it was his greatest weakness.

After a couple of minutes he noticed a weak security connection on the screen. It was not coming from this planet, but the signal emitting somewhere from up in space. The connection became weaker as Charlie struggled to lock onto it.

“Come on, you should be an easy target,” said Charlie confidently.

After a couple of minutes he had finally located his prize and the information was feeding through onto the screen fast. Charlie was not in for much luck today, there was not that much data traffic floating about with a decent credit balance apart from this one. He leaned forward as he tapped the keys in front of him. After a few moments he finally got to where he wanted to be—the victim’s credit balance.

“Bingo, gotcha,” Charlie said excitedly.

“Yes, fifty thousand credits in that balance; that should do just fine.”

The account did not belong to your average space pilot, or even a rogue, but someone with a much higher income take. Tapping away at more keys with his fingertips he locked onto some more dialogue and Charlie decided to take a closer look.

Doctor S Johnson,

Chief Medical Personnel,

HMS Liverpool

“A doctor… and British,” said Charlie laughing. Charlie had been born in the UK and had lived there for a couple of years but then moved overseas before leaving Earth.

Moving the cursor up and down, Charlie started to break the pieces of information so he could pinpoint the exact position for the hack. Whoever this doctor was, the security at the other end was poor. It could well be a medical frigate up there but Charlie had no need for drugs, just credits.

Charlie began to tap in the code and found it easier than he thought it would be.

“Easy does it. I should be fine, got a three minute window of no security before his firewall kicks in again,” said Charlie; his thumb hovering eagerly over a key and ready to strike.

He went for it. It took less than a minute to drain the credit account of an unknowing victim and transfer the funds to his own account. Charlie had to lose the connection fast and send a dummy decoy to a location that was not his. Quickly tapping his fingers onto the keyboard he punched in some coordinates. The signal had disappeared from his location. However, the local security police at the other end had been alerted by the breach as the star system was known for fraudulent activity and there was a clamp down on it at the moment. The security police quickly located the fake signal attached to a random person on an unnamed planet and they would soon pay a visit.

“Suckers, someone will be getting a nasty surprise in a couple of days,” thought Charlie, delighting in his work.

Filling up his travel bag, he got ready for the nine month outing. He had to leave and make his way to the docking bay. Richard would be waiting for him there and his downtime would be over. Walking over to the balcony windows, Charlie tapped on the glass and an atmospheric neon notice appeared in front of him. It stated the cancer risk had been lowered from high to medium, but Charlie did not want to take any chances. So he decided to get undressed, pack his coverall away into his travel bag and grab his protective atmospheric suit.