The Gay Space Adventure

Chapter 3: Arnie

The sky above the Szoriszat Space Station was always dark and starry. Even after a year in the Yilronian military, rigid schedules forcibly rewiring my internal clock, I had a hard time telling what time of day or night it was at any given moment. Half the time, when I looked at the clock on my spaceship's dashboard, I didn't believe it.

    Of course, time also meant something different on a different planet—or space station, in this case. On Yilron, each day was broken into thirty identical segments. Moons and planets under Yilron's control used the same system, regardless of whether or not it corresponded with their orbits or day-night cycles. But the Szoriszat Space Station drifted between solar systems and didn't ascribe to any planetary authority or timekeeping system in particular.

    Yet another thing that made time here nearly meaningless.

    I sat on my ship's top at an indeterminate time, staring at the star-speckled void all around, eating convenience store ravioli directly from the can. I'd become a connoisseur in the past couple months. Carl's Cosmic Shop's own ravioli recipe was the best, but a good can of Spoyardee still hit the spot.

Or maybe it was the freedom that I found so satisfying.

    No success story I'd grown up hearing involved lying atop a battered techship, stolen from a military compound and repurposed as a live-in van, on an unaffiliated space station in the middle of nowhere. None of them involved uncooked cans of Chef Spoyardee ravioli. Then again, a bright future on Yilron usually involved a menagerie of military medals and a pile of bloodied corpses at your feet. If that was success, I didn't want it.

    The space station would drift into the Hiemyxian system soon. That's where I was headed. Renowned for scientific study and boundary-breaking tech, it'd be the perfect place for a mechanic to find work. All those tech companies needed people to build what they designed, after all—and if they wouldn't hire me, there'd be plenty of people out there with shit for me to fix. That, and Yilron had no influence there. They couldn't catch me.

    Until then, though, I would drift in my ship, on the run. And I would watch the station and the sky, always on alert for an oddly focused glance from a stranger, or the gleam of a Yilronian police crest.

The penalty for desertion was death.

I didn't regret it for a single second, but I would be glad when I didn't have to be on high alert every second I was awake—and most seconds while I was asleep!

Speaking of high alert: Was that the same guy who'd passed my ship three times in the last hour? Tall dude, pasty pale, blond hair cropped short, leather jacket and leather pants? I gave him my best confused look in hopes of scaring him off by making him feel really awkward. We made eye contact.

Well, now I felt really awkward.

Not only that, but both of the guy's eyebrows went up, and I knew I was fucked. Of course I was. My wanted posters were up on all sorts of internet forums, the ones where the Yilronian police force knew they'd find the most loyalists willing to turn in a deserter.
    It didn't matter how much I liked Szoriszat. Didn't matter that I'd promised Mr. Grieves I'd help him fix his combustion engine. Didn't matter that I only had about three days of groceries and half a tank of gas, and who knew if that would take me to the next space station or planet I could safely land on. I'd been spotted. I needed to leave.

Now.

Soon as another parked ship blocked the guy's line of sight to me, I slid off Bernie's roof and hurried inside. I slammed the door too loudly. Shit. He'd hear me now. If his head was where I assumed it was, he'd know I was making a break for it. I just hoped his ship was parked across the lot, and that he wasn't reckless or loyal enough to start a chase over some kid.