Shoshone Station: The Galactic Consortium season 2

Episode One: "Not a Good Day to Die" Part Five

Dhanvin Sandovar stretched his aching back and stomped his feet to wake them. That had been the longest, most boring shift he'd ever worked. He looked out into the hallway. It was empty, both directions. He smoothed the wrinkles in his blue civil service uniform.

"Main lift in five minutes," Ghanish said as she rose from her desk and slung her purse over her shoulder. "Better get going if we don't want to miss it." Several others people around the office nodded their agreement.

Dhanvin stepped into the hallway to get out of their way. He watched his coworkers shuffle out and Ghanish close and lock the office door.

"I think I'm going to take a local lift, walk a bit," Dhanvin told them.

"I hear you," Ghanish said with a laugh. "How many days like are we going to have?"

"Better than Aztec Station," someone quipped and they waved him off.

Fourteen below was a ghost town, empty halls echoing Dhanvin's boot steps as he walked. Truthfully everywhere below about 15 above was a ghost ship. The emptiness got into his mood.

He'd open a solar station once before, back on Shavin in the Consortium, in the old galaxy. It had been hectic, those first few days. Hundreds of job seekers flooding the economic office, many of them young people who didn't want to spend years working their way up seniority ladders in established businesses elsewhere. A new station, a new chance, that was their motto.

That was okay because they also had hundreds of jobs. Everyone was pestering them everyday for new workers. Apartments to be taken out of mothballing and readied for occupants, workers who would quickly become those occupants. Stalls and shops needing set up, then shopkeepers and finally costumers.

Here they had the jobs, just not the seekers. Diplomatic issues were holding up new arrivals. Even if the diplomatic hurdles could be solved, this whole situation was so different from a station back home. The people of earth didn't seem to trust the Consortium. You saw it on the news all the time, no matter what the Consortium tried to do for them, they were suspicious, convinced it was a plot to conquer them or something.

Today, not one person had come through their door. It looked like it would stay that way for some time too. He wasn't sure what they were supposed to do. Probably the same thing they did today. Spend half the morning fielding requests for workers for one project or another, and then spend the rest of the day twiddling their thumbs waiting for the workers to not show.

Dhanvin found the first local lift and took it as far as it would go. He wandered the lonely station, letting the silence lull him into his own sense of quiet.

When the final lift opened onto the rim ward court at sixteen above, the noise and crowds burst on Dhanvin like a wave. He shook his head, driving the quiet mood from his head. He looked around. The evening crowd wasn't truthfully, that large or noisy. People were shopping or eating at stands.

Dhanvin's stomach rolled. He wasn't that far from his home, but he wasn't ready to go home just yet. The empty apartment didn't hold much for him. Instead his feet took him towards his favorite noodle stand.

Treeka was one of the few people on the station that Dhanvin considered a friend. The C'thon ran a noodle stand that served some of the best shrimp noodle soup on the station and some damn find sushi rolls to boot. The seven foot man always had a place at his counter for Dhanvin and a friendly word or two.

"Welcome, Dhanvin, busy day?" Treeka greeted him as he came up. The stand was empty.

"Naw," Dhanvin, "quite the opposite. Still no word on when they will cut through the bureaucratic tape and let people start coming up. Bah."