Denosha Station

 

Denosha Station was at the far end of the high density zone. That meant that it still had the full range of docks and amenities of a core station. Shipping was both high and low – most of the goods were on their way out of the zone, with little directed to or suitable for Denosha itself. General traffic was relatively high, as it marked the farthest point you could reach without a higher rated jump vessel. It was also a great spot to watch the larger deep space vessels get ready for their journeys.

 

Despite being relatively luxurious compared to the Deep Stations, it was still considered Frontier for a lot of softer people. That probably boiled down to the food. Most of the markets didn’t bother with RealSense protein and nutrients, preferring to serve the bulk paste with the full range of dried spices and herbs. RS packs were still available, but at a premium – there just wasn’t a large enough demand to warrant a full cargo run, or the expense of a setting up a GrowStudio. Besides, proper food would make it like every other station, and take away the ‘frontier’ uniqueness of Denosha.

People who lived here were work oriented, not that other places weren’t but, there was little else to do here once the initial thrill had worn off. Most shifts were done quickly and quietly, drama on the station was fairly low, outside of the tourists. News of anything that happened was disseminated fairly rapidly via VidPads and rarely discussed. Crews were often ‘overseen’ by visitors, who didn’t want politics and small talk interrupting their vacation.

For leisure time, it wasn’t unusual to have teams formed to do less urgent jobs just to keep the place running at peak efficiency.

Nal was one of those non-assigned jobs outside the tertiary airlock. She and a few of her normal shift had heard about some dock lights with an intermittent connection. It wasn’t really a problem, as most ships landed safely via other means, but as a tourist location, looks were important.

The fix was easy, a simple swap out, but finding out why it was malfunctioning was a bit harder to diagnose. Having nothing else planned for the afternoon, and wanting to get out of public view, Nal took the part back to her quarters. None of her personal equipment got the bottom of the problem, so she floated down the hallway to the nearest closed workshop. Gravity was often off in the crew areas, to give a rest to the body, and to use all the walls for storage.

Using the full diagnose tool she interfaced with the onboard memory of the light. Despite looking the same to the other illumination, this particular set was actually a much older chipset than the rest of the batch. That was unusual, but still not an answer. Digging into the programming she found that it didn’t have signal instructions for several types of modern vessels. That meant that it would simply stay off if it didn’t recognize the craft. She flashed the memory and gave it an update to the most recent hardware controllers. She ran through the test diagnostic and it reacted properly to all the modern incoming signals.

With the fix made it would have to be added back to storage again, and Nal was debating when to do that. She was hungry and dropping it off would be on the way to the main market. To avoid getting recognized as Denosha staff, she threw on a casual jumpsuit and jacket that made her look like a tourist from one of the less interesting school ships.

She didn’t usually mind answering the battery of question from visitors, but today she wanted to just eat in peace. Still, she kept her station crew wristband on, as it acted as a key to storage, and a credit system for the market.

The main path through the station was set to ‘fun’ gravity today – 1/3. Enough to be there, but low enough that it kept the kids entertained. That was a subtle hint from Control on who was visiting the station as well.

Nal found some expired colouring gels near where she put down the now fixed light and used a terminal to find the nearest tour group. Her shift captain Zek had offered to lead them through the full station history and adventure run rather than do another spacewalk. They were near the decompression station and she wanted to add the gels to the ‘exploding’ panel for extra effect.

It was a fun part of any serious tour. A recreation of the first and last major accident at Denosha Station. Groups would assemble in the area and go through a mock drill of the area being exposed into space. In reality, the air was just blown through the room quickly and the temperature dropped. Flashing lights and loud alarms would sell the effect though. As well, random workstations would pop open and shoot material out to make the experience memorable as the gravity was turned off.

The staff were experimenting with various shrapnel for the demonstration – something harmless but colourful and eyecatching were the only requirements. Nal had suggested unused colouring gels, normally used for tinting hydroponic water, but nobody had followed through, till now. This stuff was going to be recycled anyway, so having it go out with a bang wasn’t a waste.

She tossed the stuff to Zek who left the group with a talking history panel. He had it loaded into the liquid ejector for the main panel and was back before anyone missed him.

As much as Nal wanted to see how it went, she was still hungry and that won out. She could see a lot of recording drones in this crowd and no doubt most of them would upload stuff to the Station’s computer to send out. Anything going to the PublicNet would be left available to the Denosha crew, as a kind of final check before it got sent out.

Not that they would block anything, but it was easier to watch it from their computer instead of wasting data trying to track it down later.

As Nal approached the market it sounded fairly busy, with cries of “Grocky” said in disgust and “Coo” in awed voices. Apparently “Grocky” was ‘Gross + Yucky’ and “Coo” was the latest variant on the OldEarth ‘Cool’. Exiting the narrow hallway she could now see this group was mostly clustered in the back and only waiting on the noisy stragglers.

She hung at the edge of the open space trying not to get noticed. Compared to the other students her clothing was remarkably unremarkable and her jacket hid her crew wristband. Nal was clearly not part of the group and when the teachers glanced in her direction they knew not to count her. The group headed off to the loading docks and was soon clear of the market, save the loud chatter that still echoed back.

Nal knew the newest paste combos were near the middle of the market and often had time limited flavouring. This time it was a combo plate of BreadFill, TomatoRed and CheezeTop, a clumsy but ultimately effective attempt to mimic a pizza. You could wait an extra few minutes to get it squeezed out into a round layered pattern, but Nal wasn’t patient enough to wait on ceremony. She grabbed the ideal proportions and got them blast heated to serving temperature. She tapped her wristband on the exchange terminal and got a quick beep to confirm the transaction.

One of the few things the station did grow was edible cutlery and she bounced over to the hydroponic wall to break off a serving stick. It could be shaped into a knife, spoon or fork with a laser lathe nearby, but Nal just used it as is. She dragged it across her plate through each of the three paste lines to get a good mix and bit the excess before it fell off. The zesty seasoning of the serving stick mixed well with the pizza combo and she nearly ate it all before finishing the paste.

It took a few minutes for her stomach to feel full, she had eaten too fast and the BreadFill hadn’t expanded in the air much. She nearly went back for seconds but held off, feeling hungry till everything had settled.

Her wristband chirped as she left the eating area and reminded her to rate the food as she dropped off her plate for cleaning. It wasn’t required for crew to rate every time, but the wristband wasn’t sophisticated enough to see if you’d eaten the same thing before. It seemed like an odd deficiency in otherwise good technology, but Nal assumed it was geared to the worlds and stations where paste wasn’t the main option. They wanted to keep the rating function but didn’t register every tube that went through the market.

It was something she might look into with a bit of practice coding, linking the inventory of the station with the marketplace transactions. It seemed like a good project, one that would be a possible job shift if she did well.

That would be for later though, as she had to do the paperwork for the light repair. Rather than heading all the way back to her bunk area, she stopped at the closest communal working area. She had taken the lead on the project by doing the extra work to diagnose the light. That meant dictating that bit for someone else to write up, or just doing it herself. The first bit was the same either way, and the only difference was who to send it to. Someone else had already submitted the original work plan, so appending it with the followup wasn’t that bad.

Usually that was that, so Nal was surprised to get a followup on the report. Denosha command had wanted to find out the item id for the light to track down how the defective one had got to them. A light wasn’t critical but most supply runs came with a variety of parts. Manufacturing was done near asteroids that contained the main materials used, so any number of things could be suspect. Each asteroid was unique and multiple groups operated in the same area.

Nal had put the light back into general circulation but the work was done under the workshop cameras. She could sign back into that and isolate the relevant footage. If that didn’t work, the diagnostic tool also registered the relevant info, but that meant a trip back to the workshop to sign in manually. On the other hand, the footage wasn’t great, as she missed the best practice of showing the item to the camera first.

She could watch the rest of the footage and hope for a good angle, or just give up and go back. After quick mental calculation about the remaining amount of video vs the slog through the station again, Nal bet on the footage being helpful. She couldn’t see the number on the device, but forgot that the diagnostic tool added it’s own overlay to the video once it came on. It was normally not very helpful, showing only the type of tool used, but it was actually a full output of all the information. She flipped through the various modes of output and found the relevant information, saving herself a trip. She resaved the footage with the proper screen mode on overlay, just in case command needed more info while investigating.

A day later and her shift supervisor Zek had informed them of the bad news. The older OS chips had been installed on a half a dozen semi-vital system parts and their group was in charge of going through the found parts and updating them. Nal’s check was shown as the instructional video since few people had done such a procedure before. Thankfully it was mostly going to be used as a training exercise for everyone else. Nal was temporary supervisor and mostly there to talk people through any problems that came up.

The rest of station’s work groups were in charge of uninstalling and reinstalling the suspect parts and sorting the ones still in inventory. Rather than have every system and area down at once, they worked in waves. More vital systems one at a time, and after that, less critical systems in whole zones at once. Inventory sorting would happen first though, so any replacements installed would be good to go.

It took three days to go through everything but only a half a dozen exceptions came up. Nal wrote them up and recorded her own video of that particular sub-fix, in case it came up again. Zek and Denosha command had been pleased with the efforts of everyone, but particularly Nal’s work.

Her videos were clear, understandable and strangely popular, despite the dry subject matter. While other stations would solve the problem differently the instructions were still helpful. In more central areas of the high density zone custom build robots would fix a similar problem, a human backup was still handy for immediate response.

Command had asked if she wanted to be the ‘face’ of the repair work on Denosha Station, having her videos on the local VisitorNet and leading a few tour groups from time to time. It wasn’t quite where Nal had predicted being, but after a short trial she grew into it.

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