The Salvager and the Dancer

Author: Marcus Dreaddlin

Original post: https://redsunindustries.weebly.com/rsi-blog/eve-fan-fiction-the-salvager-and-the-dancer

Entry for the YC116 Pod and Planet Contest in the Eight Thousand Suns in New Eden category.

"Docking request accepted; your ship will be towed into the station."

Another run... It had been a long month. But Arcturus had made it back to his home base, safe and sound, once again. High sec piracy was getting worse, much worse, he realized. Concord was about as useless as a screen door on an airlock. But Arcturus was careful. He'd managed to deliver his precious cargo, and complete the mission. As always he shook his head at the thought of working for the Khanid. Gallente working for Amarrians were few and far between; once, he couldn't have imagined in his wildest dreams running missions for the Khanid Navy. But here he was, far from home, and now likely to be never again able to return home. The path had been long, and the decisions he had made were in the past, beyond changing now. There was nothing to be done but to go forward.

The docking bay stank of ozone and leaking plasma coolant, as always. There, in containers piled high throughout the deck, were the fruits of his long labors - stacks of salvaged components and ship equipment, in and on the crates, and spilling out onto the oil-stained steel and tritanium deck. Arcturus wasn't even sure what all exactly he had. Sometimes even he was surprised by what he found, stashed away, parts he had pulled from some deadspace wreck and stashed away, and then forgotten, even if he had noticed what they were at the time he found them. Running tractor beams and salvage rigs had become almost second nature to him; he could salvage a wreck without even taking his eyes from the tactical display, a skill that had allowed him to survive when others he had known had died many times. Some could handle the consciousness transfer; others had left the life of a pod pilot. Some had decided they could not go on, and had allowed themselves to drift off into the ether, surrendering immortality in favor of the peace of the Void.

As always, after detaching his body from the pod, he walked through the piles of stuff, a datapad in hand, deciding what to keep and what to sell. And as always, he stopped by the cryogenic chambers.

There were a lot of them, every one discovered in the wreck of some ship or destroyed habitation module, encountered by chance or after some long grind of a strike mission. So many faces, partially obscured by the frost that crept inexorably across their viewing screens, the unknown in cryosleep, likely never to wake. Janitors, freed slaves, militants, commandos who had been en route to a battlefield they now would never reach... So many collected, and stacked in his cargo bay, collecting dust. He was no slaver - that far was his line, and he would not cross it.

He had learned long years before of the dangers of opening these pods. For one thing, some of the pods might be slightly damaged. Repairs required highly specialized training, skills which Arcuturus lacked. And he lacked the resources to hire someone. He would not recklessly try and open the pods, only to kill the unsuspecting sleeper within.

And as well, you never knew just exactly who somebody in a cryo-pod might be. One of the freed slaves he had let out, so many years ago in Parses, had immediately done their very best to slit his throat. The slave had nearly managed it, too; and since then Arcuturus always, without exception, wore a small handheld blaster on his hip, no matter where he was or what he was doing. He had beaten that one's brains out with a hydrospanner, while desperately trying to keep the tip of the slave’s blade from slicing into his neck.

For Arcturus, one bad experience was enough. And yet he could not, would not bring himself to simply terminate them. And so they waited, in suspended animation, lined up in their dusty cryo pods, so many pale faces within a dreamless sleep, unknowing where they were and what had happened to them. Sometimes, Arcturus wondered if they had families, who either thought they were dead or wondered what had become of them. Did they have fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, wives, husbands, children? There was no way to know, and advertising their existence would do nothing but blow his cover with the Khanid Navy, something he wasn't prepared to do. And so they remained.

But still he tortured himself with them; he could not stop himself. He could not prevent himself from walking down the corridor, on either side of which the containers were piled, as he always did. He could not prevent himself from finding that one chamber, and looking in once more, at that face. Her face.

He remembered the cargo container, expelled from a destroyed pleasure hub, how long ago? Years? A decade? He couldn't remember how long it had been. He remembered the humming of the engines, the whine of the salvagers. The container had been marked "Exotic Dancers." He had since surmised that it must have been an as yet unopened shipment of dancer slaves, selected for their grace and beauty from the slave pens, to be used in whatever way their purchasers in the pleasure hubs saw fit, most likely used up and then discarded and replaced. Slaves, and human life, were cheap out here in Arniri. Maybe everywhere in human controlled space.

He had gotten the salvage and the components home that day, and had sorted everything out, leaving the cryo pods to last. He remembered the first time he had looked through the glass viewing plate, the first time had had seen her face.

She was beautiful, pale with heavy lidded eyes, and long dark hair that flowed in a frozen cascade around her pretty face and down past her shoulders. The delicate lips were parted just a bit, as though the cryosleep process had taken her by surprise; otherwise the face was serene, at peace. He had memorized every square inch, from her delicate nose to her high cheekbones and soft chin.

As always he stared for a long moment, his heart in a vise. Who was she? How had she come to be packed up this this pod, like so much trade goods, frozen in cryosleep and sold to the highest bidder? From the first moment he had seen her face, Arcturus had been in her thrall. He was in love with her, this frozen princess, this slave girl he had never met. An impossible thing, a sad hope, but here he was. He could not change it. He had lived a solitary life; there had been no time for wife or family, and then when he had come to know himself better, had a change of heart and realized such things were truly what he wanted, it had been too late. And besides, he was a scarred, old, grizzled and lumpish Khanid Navy ex-pat, with limited prospects and no home to ever return to. He was a pod pilot, but a pod pilot on the lower end of the scale in the bigger picture of things, and he knew it. What girl would look at him twice?

As always, he berated himself for a coward for never having the courage to try and get her released from her icy prison. But what if he were to release her? Would she stay with him, a Gallente traitor, a scruffy scrap salvager with oil-stained hands and limited prospects? There was no chance. He had no chance. Likely she would try and slit his throat as well. He could not imagine the prospect of never being able to see her face again - the thought caused him so much pain he had to force it away from his mind. And if she were to die in the extraction process - no! She was safe in her cryo pod, where he could come and visit her, whenever he came back from his missions, and gaze upon the face that he loved past all hope, but could never touch. Slowly a tear crept from the corner of one slitted eye, and he turned away, wiping it out. Arcturus walked back down the corridor, and away from her. There was the bar, or the pod. He could not face the bar. The pod called to him. In the silence of space he could find solace.

Arcturus settled into the soft interior, felt the cerebral harness and body interface reattach, felt the pod fluid flow over his body, and closed his eyes. As always, her face glowed there in the darkness.

"Dock with the Gungnir," he said quietly. The pod's docking mechanisms began to whirr as the pod was lowered into the Ashimmu. With a final clang, the pod doors closed, and he reached for the docking clamp controls. Time to get back to work.