Photo by “So have you got for me today.”
At the crack of the simulant can, Deborah glanced over her shoulder. “Oh, hey Brent. Hop onto station 2, Sandy is running late, morning sickness you know. I’m staying until she can get here.”
After slamming back his second can of the day, Brent eased into the station’s traffic control seat indicated, ignoring the other two empty stations. The monitoring implants registered his biometrics, checking him as fit for duty before recording him on the clock. “Hopefully she didn’t get any on her uniform this time. Yesterday, I got to smell vomit all shift. Speaking of shift, where is Karl?”
“Hot date.” Deborah’s voice dripped angry sarcasm.
Two words slipped out which Brent hoped wouldn’t put him in front of a review board. “Which ship this time?”
“Bounty’s Towel out of Gamma Oorts sector. Using the emergency dock on level three.”
“If he wasn’t Black Clock party…”
“Or the son of an ‘elected’ councilman.” Deborah agreed. “Aside from that, I can’t deny he actually knows how to be a controller, unlike the last party hack.”
Her voice changed to sweetness and clarity. “Welcome to Pluto Station AC8647, please verify ship’s name and captain.” After a short pause she added, “Why yes, we put all ships under guns, even those coming from Alpha Centauri.”
“Yes, even coming from Earth. Standard procedure while we are under war footing.”
“Yes, we are under war footing with the Meridians.”
“Yes, the war was won forty years ago, but their ships do not have FTL capability or communications.”
“Thank you, I will pass on your suggestions of where to put the missiles to the Homeworld Defense Council. Attached is the Warehouse docking instructions package. You will be looking for Romeo 147. Please confirm you see the beacon. … Thank you.”
While she dealt with the difficult ship, Brent cleared the three waiting automated mining ships to release their Oorts cloud materials into the inner system freight runners. One had been waiting for over an hour.
A quick check showed Karl left his seat nine-eight minutes ago. Technically, they were to have minimum shifts of three so someone could take a piss break and keep the required two people in Control at all time. Four people for heavy traffic times…or war footing. Shifts were to be six hours long, four shifts for the Earth twenty-four-hour clock all orbital stations maintained, three days on, one day off, absolutely no double or back-to-back shifts. Including bodies for sick leave and vacation and supervision, Pluto’s Traffic Control orbital station should have thirty trained controllers. They had five.
Earth had stopped sending specialists outward during the war and never restarted. Having the population drop from fourteen billion to one and an eighth billion because of kinetic bombardment impacted their outmigration policies.
“Sorry about that,” Deborah said, her voice no longer customer service modulated. “And thanks for clearing the backlog. The emergency dock on level four is still under repair, they say four hours.”
“They have been saying four hours since Tuesday.” Brent growled. Level one didn’t have one, as that is the big-wig level and the designers didn’t want to risk a bad emergency docking there. The level two dock was officially for diplomats but actually held the stationmaster’s personal yacht for “necessary repairs” going on fourteen months so he wouldn’t have to pay berth fees. Something every single one of the hereditary politicians exiled to Pluto to wait out an embarrassment learned to do. Which left levels three and four, presently taken up by Karl’s smuggling operations and a bad seal that none of their printers could reproduce.
And Repairs and Maintenance couldn’t just repurpose a seal from the other twelve docking ports, three per level, as four of them were also missing the essential air seal. Earth not only stopped shipping out specialists, they had also stopped shipping out replacement parts, though they sure as Sol shines accepted incoming raw materials.
“Six ships are in dock, nineteen are working the warehouse area. We have four passenger FTL ship beacons incoming in the next two hours.” She shoved the schedules to his screen.
“I see two docked ships are scheduled to depart, giving us room for the incoming but that will fill us up. How on schedule are they?”
“The Beowolf runner, Smelling like a Rose in Space, says they are on schedule.”
“Good,” Brent grunted.
“And Casa de Mañana out of the Asteroid sector Tango has assured me they are also on schedule to depart on time…in three, maybe four hours max.”
Brent pinched his nose. “Vago Bover still captain?”
“Yep.”
“So six hours if we are lucky. Any of the other ships having a chance in hell leaving early?”
“Already checked, and no.”
“Any chance one of the passenger ship’s are actually high value freight on fast shipment?”
“No.”
“Bypass us to go directly to Earth.”
“Also no.”
“Karl’s friend?”
“Needs refueling, so four hours minimum.”
“R&M miraculously get the parts they needed and repaired one of the other docks?”
“Lysander turned in his notice to take a slot on Moonbeam Lunacy when it arrives tomorrow.”
“That will leave us just Raymond and Pinnick.”
“Raymond is in the hospital until they can regrow him a liver.”
“Of course.”
An alarm beeped in their implants, returning their full attention to their stations. “I got the passenger ship.” Deborah chimed in.
Brent was happy to leave the high stress people to her. Registering the Beowolf ship flight plan only took a moment, letting him focus on juggling the snare happening in the warehouse section as the Alpha Centauri ship had not in fact followed the Romeo beacon. He pinged the arguing ships with the missile lock since they weren’t allowing him to get a word in edgewise. No need for them to know only two guns and one missile tube were operational, or even had ammo.
“That is not regulation.” His co-seat teased.
“Like you haven’t done it.”
“Not in nine hours.”
“That has to be a record.”
Deborah and Brent paused their banter as the passenger ship kissed airlocks. The refueling, reairing, and purging teams climbed over the ship like ants while the passengers from another star system unloaded to escape the tin can and stale air they had been locked into for weeks as their FTL ship ate the space between stars, into a slightly larger tin can and slightly staler air of the station. They watched each person’s biosignal flying outside gravity and air like the Man on the Moon watched Earth. They hadn’t lost a Dutchman in the last three years, despite each of them pulling at least a twelve-hour shift every single day during that time baring illness. It was a streak the entire control crew protected, because it protected their people.
When the last one buzzed back inside the station skin, they exhaled. Deborah checked her incoming messages through a complicated message of connections. The software providing direct communication into the controlling area had degraded over the years; any patching done was concentrated on communication between the controller’s suite and the traffic. Communicating, even with their implants, was a chore requiring four or five steps. Going in person was easier for most tasks, if they could leave their seats.
“Sandy threw up again.”
“Can Wynn cover?” Brent asked.
“It’s okay, I got this.” Deborah activated their bypass for her to cover a third shift regulation six-hour shift. “I’ll let my partners know and tell Sandy to take the time she needs.”
“Girl….” Brent sighed in exasperation and exhaustion.
“Boy….” She returned in the same exact tone.
They both knew their options were limited. The protest was merely performance. There were three more ships arriving and they only had two docks.
Good Housekeeping, the last to arrive, did not like waiting but they did have enough air to wait out the Mañana’s departure, only five hours behind schedule. The Towel pulled out only thirty minutes later, having officially never unloaded a single item or person to go through customs.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you.” Sandy gushed as she rushed in at mid-shift, slipping into station 3. “I can’t believe how hard it is to keep food down while I am this hungry.”
Yawning, Deborah stood once Sandy’s biometrics recorded present. “I’m going to the schoolhouse to see if there is any chance of getting an intern out of this or next year’s crop.”
“Last I heard they were pushing all math-inclined into R&D,” Sandy said, getting in the know why setting up her baby for daycare.
Brent snorted. “Hands-on math for the R&D crowd, pencil-pushers for our crowd. We should go in person and interview them.”
“Not you,” Deborah said. “You’ll scare them. Maybe me and Karl.”
“Karl?” The two on-shift controllers turned toward her.
“He is slimy, yes,” Deborah said, “But he knows how to present.”
Brent pinched his nose. “I hate him.”
“But, if you didn’t know him….” Deborah trailed off.
“I would buy whatever he sells, damn him to Jupiter’s gravity well.” Brent admitted, having fallen for Karl’s tricks during his first month as party spy, even while knowing he had been a party spy. “The kids won’t have a chance.”
“Except, unlike the normal timepiece,” she used the term they used internally for the party’s department watcher, “he understands this job and knows its needs and nearly cares about it, if only for the money and connections it brings. He won’t sell the job to people who won’t be a good fit just to get bodies in the door.”
Sandy and Brent exchanged looks. They normally worked together. Deborah pulled the timepiece partner because she could usually cover for two when the timepiece was completely useless, and had never slugged one like both Brent and Sandy had done, more than once. “What about Wynn?” Sandy asked.
“They just got married.” Deborah responded. A raft of other information flashed between them without saying a word. Wynn, while they had made it six years in the booth fresh out of school, had a dream. They would be emigrating to one of the colony worlds as soon as their new family unit received final approval.
The entire Pluto base was a skeleton crew stripped of all meat and nothing feed into it. The inner and outer system had been filled with the pressure of Earth’s excess population for three hundred years of settling, exploding outward, yet still having a population growing faster than people could jump out of the gravity well. Colony ships running out to the Earth-like worlds or at least to stars where new stations could be built. Until the Meridians and their extermination war.
For sixty years, since the bombardment, only vacuum remained instead of full steam ahead.
The two on-duty turned to the boards when the internal alarm went off.
Deborah jumped too and returned to her seat. All three stopped breathing and their hands moved faster than the last Dutchman incident.
Karl ran in the door, “What the hell is a Zula warning and why can’t I turn it off?” Two seconds later Wynn pushed him out of the way and jumped into the dusty fourth station, bringing it up, ignoring the five missing lights scavenged to keep the primary stations working.
Deborah shoved the Zulu file to Karl’s implant.
“Meridians?” His olive complexion blanched. “But…but…we won.”
“They don’t have faster-than-light communication.” Wynn reminded him. “They might not know that.”
“Or they might take exception to it.” Brent growled before ordering Karl to “Get Peggy up here now.”
“Peggy?”
“The stationmaster’s assistant.” Deborah filled in, “It’s coming in high, off platter.”
“Thanks, found them, five ships passing the first Tripwire—and there it goes. Nice explosion,” said Wynn. “I’ll say they are still hostiles.”
“Timepiece, we need Peggy here now, and I guess we should officially tell the stationmaster too, for all the good he will be.” Sandy spun her chair around to face Karl. “You, go get Peggy, extract anyone else you think has a functioning brain.”
“What do I say?” Karl struggled, his attention divided between the four controllers.
“Just tell Peggy Zulu, please.” Deborah said.
He left.
Once assured they were alone, Deborah reported, “I got two planet bombardment ships, one support repair ship, one buzz-swarm, and an infantry transport.”
“Confirm profiles.” Brent said.
“Confirm energy signatures.” Sandy said.
“Working on damage report.” Wynn said. “They’ve been in the dark for a long-time. Some things have had to have broken.”
“One can only hope.” Deborah said.
(words 2,089; first published 5/31/2026)
