A Necessary Evil

A ‘necessary evil’, I heard it called once. People tended to make a judgment in those days, make everything into an either-or, black-white, hoo-haw.

What do I mean ‘in those days’? Like they’ve ever stopped…but you know what I mean. They over-simplified everything

But…it was simple.

You either rode Freight or you worked Freight.

You wouldn’t remember, and I hope you never do, but we were stretched so thin then. Pulled too taut. Clawing at cycles of promising nothingness.

The exhaustion was colder than the power failures.

The damp ate deeper than any hunger.

We watched our own sickness flourish as if we were scientists, observing our detached selves.

We were post-everything. Post-hope.

No, not everything. There was still fear.

And then that first shoal came. Then the Junk Fleet arrived.

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That’s what you call them in your history lessons these days, greenwarp, right? The Junk Fleet. We called them hope.

They were large, large frames – like a seahorse cross-mated with a shrimp, only done on a god-scale – and filled with those pods! Those first-taste-of-bread-and-yessir-life-has-colour pods! Those little buggars, about 600,000 per ship, each the size of a land-car… they did a lot of renewing.

And in that renewal grew hope. We hoped. That day, when the Junk Fleet arrived, we call it the Last Night of Fear.

Yes…yes…I’ve heard tell of some of the comments of those cynics on the Elder Council, the witty ‘and thus began the ‘First Night of Need’ comments, but what can I say? We were idealists.

And these pods were something else. They made it possible for us to live out here. They showed that it all worked. One generation, no, a generation-and-a-half, and the theory of our logistics were beginning to function at last. Our little Confederation: running always, hunted, haunted; driven into this isolated triangle, in a far-off corner of the Pax Umbrae Unknown, scraping a life from these barren, dancing moons… well you know how the songs go.

The Brektoli – hey wait there, young’un, don’t go pale. You’re a graduate now – you know of them. But how about their weird little vassal species, the Bokchila? (Ever hear of a Bokchila Widow-Storm? Right around harvest time?). Well anyway, they were chasing the founding tribes around for years – those tribes that got away. They were hungry for them.

You can’t know the terror. I pray it never occurs to you, but it went without saying, in those days, that if the choice was between the Brektoli, the Bokchila, and a starving, frozen moon… then we would rather go cold and hungry.

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So the pods, they gave us life. They showed the viability of our new way of being. They showed that we had enough resources for all, more than enough, and all within the three flat lines of our border.

What is it that you greenwarps call the Wastes, the Savage? The Wild? I heard some term like that, well, whatever the name, we called it safety. That cosmic confusion, whatever it is, kept us hidden and safe. The Wastes ensured our sanctuary and our isolation. They meant survival.

The Junk Fleet and these pods, they meant a life. They spelled a future for our wee baby Confederation. They marked a proof of concept of our cradle co-operative.

And they also marked the arrival of the money folk.

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Now to be fully honest with you, I saw you go over to the other table there a bit earlier, the one across the way, so you saw them as good as I be doing the same. Let me just say that I can see by your hands that – no offence – you are not getting a manicure every cycle, so I can guess you’re from good folk. You might not know much about those fellows at that table across the way, those gentle people of The Mercantile Amity… but I can guarantee they know you. Or rather, they know exactly how much hard work to pulp out of a young mech graduate like yourself.

Sure the powder-blue capes look spiffy but honestly, what are you Kenzalan? A greenwarp from the K-Station. Ha! You in the Sunday best wouldn’t be good enough for those Troina Cross cullers, those twin-orbital, money-hooked hoors. They’d think you’re the help!

Y’see it was the Junks, they drew some sort of line. Because when they had berthed (or birthed, honestly, it was weird) their cargo, they OF COURSE had to fill each of those land-car sized pods up with INSERT NOMINALLY EXPENSIVE LOCAL ITEM HERE and then saw how much room they had.

So, they offered passage:

To those who wanted to experience the explorator missions of the Trade Alliances, not as void-hands but as safariists, as tourists. In other words, they offered a cruise experience to those who could afford to travel in the platinum and cruatite splendour of the staterooms whose cocktail-swigging patrons banteringly referred to as ‘travelling Freight.’;

And to those who chose to take to The Void for other reasons. The Merchant recruiters spotted them - us - a mile off and had the same pitch.

“Start at the bottom and reach for the stars.”

Stability, possibly riches, and all for the low-low cost of that notorious Indentureship Contract (which ensured that the cost of feeding, berthing, and training a complete trainee was offset) – a brief five-year servitude in the scummy bowels of one of those mammoth insects.

Roasted. Frozen. Hungry. Thirsty. Deafened. Blinded. Chivvied. Started. Never allowed to rest. Never allowed a song. Nothing like liberty. Nothing like hope.

And recall that the average voyage, those early ones at least, were 6 years minimum to reach homeport. Think how many souls did their honest five years just to die on their sixth with a year’s credit that would be remitted to their loved ones (minus administration costs minus repatriation costs minus berthing of said relative in cold storage for three or four years as an increasing fuel vig...)

That’s when we came together. When we first stepped in, The Voidworkers Guild.

You know our words – commerce be stilled and all that. But there is one other thing I want you to remember. You are a colleague now so let me give you advice.

In all your career out there in the deep void, over who-knows-how-many-lightyears and across whichever vast distances, remember one thing.

You’re either one of them:

Those who ride Freight,

Or you’re one of us:

Those who work Freight.

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(For Æ 040425 – bliain amháin)