Habitations


    Because of automated space based factories, Habitations (or “Habs”) are the most efficient way to house large numbers of humans.  Habs are easy to automate and their designs can be standardized and thus traded like any other IP.  Planets on the other hand are all unique and thus cannot be commoditized.  While most humans prefer to live on a planet, Habs are the most common home for humans today.


    Excerpted With Permission


    Data Trader’s Handbook


    Copyright 3250, Interstellar Data Trader Guild


    The hab was one of the strangest structures Leo had ever seen.  Most habs were just simple cylinders.  A cylinder had the space needed to house as many people as you wanted while still having a relatively pressure friendly shape.  Boxes or other right angles aren’t good for pressure vessels.


    Whoever built this thing didn’t know or didn’t care about that at all.  It was a series of cubes, almost stacked at random.  It really looked like one of those ugly statues Leo’s mother claimed to like but didn’t actually own.


    It was also brightly lit.  Not the normal navigational lights you would see on any space structure, but bright floodlights, illuminating various parts of the structure in vivid colors.  Why on earth did they light the OUTSIDE of their hab?  Who the hell is looking at the OUTSIDE?


    Finally, it had the word “SVARG” written on each side in massive, illuminated letters.  Again, who was looking at lettering from space?


    “Anybody know what a SVARG is?”  Leo asked the bridge at large.


    A short crewman of Indian heritage stuck his hand up.  “Svarg means ‘paradise’ or heaven.  In Hindi.”  He pronounced it “soo argh” not the way Leo had mangled the word.


    “hmm.”


    Ollu just shrugged.  “Comms, raise the Svarg, ask for permission for us to bring a shuttle across to dock.”


    After a few minutes, the crewman manning the comms station turned back to Ollu.  “They say they’re a private station.  No visitors.”


    Ollu looked at Leo who shrugged in turn.   Ollu sighed.  “OK.  Pipe the connection down to conference two.”  She pressed a button on her panel.  “Linton, report to conference two.  Immediate.”


    Once settled into the conference room, Ollu gave Craig a hard look.  “OK Craig, you want us to talk to them but they don’t want to talk to us.  Do your magic.”


    Craig just grinned and pushed a button on the comms.  “This is Craig Linton, I need to speak to Vishnu Newman.”


    The answer came back immediately.  “I am sorry Master Trader Linton, Rabbi Newman is not taking calls.”


    Craig laughed.   “Who am I talking to?”


    “This is Rabbi Newman’s personal assistant, Leonard.”


    “Leonard, I want you to listen to me.  I want you to listen very carefully.”  He paused.  “Are you listening son?”


    “Yes Master Trader.”


    “Son, I have about eighty armed drones in the hold of my ship here.  If I don’t talk to Vishnu in sixty seconds, I am going to blow the shit out of that garish hunk of crap you call a hab and I won’t stop firing until I am positive everyone aboard is dead.  Do you read me son?”


    “Yes, master trader.”


    “Zero latency?”


    “Zero.”


    “Fifty eight seconds.”


    The line went dead.


    Ollu was shaking her head.  “Just when I tell myself that there is nothing you could possibly do to shock me, you go ahead and shock me.”


    “Think of it as entertainment value.”


    “No, that’s not exactly how I think about it.”


    Craig was ostentatiously looking at his chrono as the seconds ticked down.


    The com came alive at almost exactly 60 seconds.  “Who the fuck is this?  Craig Linton is surely dead at the hands of a jealous husband by now!”


    “Vishnu, it’s me.  Cut the shit.”


    “Bollocks Craig, I was just having one on with a…”


    Craig cut him off.  “Shut the fuck up Vishnu.  Listen to me.”  Leo was stunned to hear that Vishnu shut up.  “It happened.  They did it.”


    “No fucking way.”


    “Yes.  Me and this whole ship got banned.”


    “406?”


    “Yep.  406.”


    “Stupid bastards.  Stupid fucking bastards.”


    “So, you going to invite us over?”


    “What?  Right.  Get your sorry butt over here.”


    “Rolling.”


    “Craig?”


    “Yah?”


    “You don’t really have eighty armed drones in that bucket do you?”


    “No.”


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    “Fuck, I knew it.”


    “I have twenty armed corvettes rigged for remote operation that we used to escape from six Guild cutters.  We had to take two of them out first.”


    “Fuck.  Get over here.”


    Craig cut the circuit.  Ollu was still sitting in her seat, not showing any inclination to move.  “Does everyone you know talk like that?”


    Craig laughed for the first time since the battle with the Guild.  “If they don’t when I meet them, they do after we get to be friends.”


    “Fuck.”


    In the end, they agreed that Ramona would come along also, if only to keep an eye on Craig and sit on him if necessary.  When Ramona arrived on the boat deck, she silently handed Leo his sidearm.  Leo looked at it distastefully then put the holster on his belt and the weapon in the holster.  Ramona had hers holstered already.


    Ollu saw Leo put on his gun.  “You really going to go armed?”


    “Yeah.  You want one?”


    “No.”


    Leo didn’t know if Ramona was rubbing off on him, but the idea of going into an unknown station unarmed made him feel uneasy.  Going armed didn’t make him feel much better, but it helped a little.


    As they got closer to the hab, more and more strange details appeared.  Some of the cubes appeared to be filled with water.  Almost all of them had very large clear sections, through some of them they could see what appeared to be fish.  Others looked like parklands, one a desert.  “What is this place?”


    Craig just grunted.  “Heaven.  Just like it says on the tin.”  Leo gave Craig a searching look.  “Look, Vishnu isn’t wrapped too tight.  He’s a Jewish guy from England who thinks he’s actually Hindi.  He built this thing as a spiritual retreat, but it’s basically just a monument to himself.”


    “Isn’t wrapped too tight?”


    “Yeah.  Not all there.”


    “That’s something, coming from you.”


    “Yes, keep that in mind.”  He shook his head.  “I haven’t seen him in fifty years, but I assume he hasn’t gotten any saner.”


    As they pushed through the GTE barrier, Leo lust looked through the main port in shock.  They were in a park.  What should have been a docking bay looked just like a city park that he had seen pictures of from old earth.  Green grass, trees, benches scattered around, the works.  Instead of basketball courts, there was a large pad with landing lights installed.  “I assume we put down there.”


    Waiting for them was a small man of mixed ethnic heritage.  Dark hair, tanned but not dark skin and dark eyes.  He was wearing a paisley nehru jacket and bright yellow pants but no shoes.  The tall blond man next to him looked positively ordinary by comparison, wearing a grey shipsuit.  Craig was the first out of the hatch and went straight to the man in the paisley nehru jacket and gave him a big bear hug.  “Vishnu, good to see you.”


    “Surprisingly, I’m happy to see you also.”


    “First time for everything.”


    Vishnu turned to the other members of the party.  “Welcome to my home.  Welcome to Svarg.”


    Leo caught himself rubbernecking.  He’d been on hundreds of habs, but never one like this.  It even had a ‘sky’ that looked pretty real.  Was that a bird?  “I’ve never seen a hab like this before.”


    Vishnu grunted.  “That’s because people are boring.  You can literally make your home any shape you want, why would you want to live in some boring cylinder thing?   Yech..”   He gave a dramatic shudder.


    Ollu was less impressed.  “Not everyone is worth a billion guilders.”


    Vishnu just laughed.  “Yes my dear, but I am.  What else would I spend it on, what?”  He made a shooing motion with his hands.  “Enough chin wagging.  Come, come.  Let’s sit and have some tea.  Galaxy spanning decisions require tea.”


    Leo let his puzzlement show.  “Galaxy spanning decisions?”


    “Yes.  Of course.  You’ve come here to end the guild, have you not?  I haven’t seen Craig here for almost fifty years.  I assume this is not a social call.”  He led the group towards what looked like a small building but turned out to be a lift.  Moving deeper into the station, they came out on a level that looked more like what Leo expected a hab to look like.  Long corridors, doorways, small atriums.   “Oh, and Ollu, please allow me to extend a special greeting.  I don’t often meet with ‘Rebel Ship Handlers.’”


    Ollu looked like she was going to slug Craig.  “I usually just go by Ollu.  Master Trader Channah if you must.”


    “Master trader is it?”   Vishnu led them into a very luxurious but quite normal looking conference room.  “You must tell me more about how a ship handler, a SEEKER, ship handler became a master trader.”  He nodded to himself.  “Oh yes, quite a tale, I am sure.”  He turned to offer Ramona a chair.  “Oh my.  Raeburn special forces, is it?”  Ramona just nodded.  “Oh.  And you must be a seeker also, aren’t you my dear?”


    “Well, yes.”  Ramona looked a little stunned.  She wasn’t sure if Vishnu was a clown or the most dangerous person she had ever met.


    “Oh my, my, my.  I seem to have fallen into one of Craig’s less believable vids.  Craig old son, you’re not having me on here are you?”


    Craig settled into a comfortable chair with a sigh that spoke to his hundred plus years.  “I wish I were Vishnu.  I’ve been hiding from this for over fifty years.”


    “Hiding in a bottle you mean.”


    “Vishnu, this is not the time to discuss my moral failings.”


    “Ah, but I disagree old son.  This is exactly the time.  You are about to ask me for the most potent weapon ever designed.  I won’t give it to an old drunk with a score to settle.”  Vishnu’s mask of jocularity faded away, leaving him with a hard expression that Ramona recognized.


    She leaned forward.  “Where are you from Vishnu?”


    “From England.  Shropshire, specifically.  A little place called Telford.  Have you been to England, my dear?”


    “No, I mean where are you FROM?  Who trained you?”


    Ramona had Vishnu’s complete attention.  “I don’t think I quite understand, my dear.  I’m a trader.  Master Trader Newman if you prefer.”


    “No.”


    “Apologies?”


    “You’re Royal Marines.  Or SAS.  Sergeant at least, probably Sergeant Major.”


    “Oh?”


    “I’ve seen that look before.  I thought there was something about the way you walked, but you can’t mistake that look.  Even on Raeburn we know about SAS.  We used your training manuals for OpFor research.”


    At that moment, a uniformed steward came into the room with a very elaborate tea set.   Vishnu clapped his hands in delight.  “Lovely.  I hope you enjoy Darjeeling.  I wasn’t expecting company or I would have popped down to earth for supplies.”  Vishnu busied himself with getting tea for everyone.  After everyone had a steaming cup in front of them, he sat down again.  “It’s a bit embarrassing actually, but it’s Brigadier.  Some nonsense about services rendered to the crown or some such.”


    “Well, Brigadier, do you expect me to believe that it’s just a coincidence that the only person in the known galaxy who has the power to destroy the Guild is an officer in the SAS?”  Unlike most settled planets, Earth still had local political entities.  Some of them like the United Kingdom had been in place for literally centuries.  They seemed strange and something out of ancient history for those from outer systems like Raeburn, but they were still fully functioning governments even if their overall importance in the pantheon of human history were significantly less than when all of humanity occupied a single planet.


    “Retired, my dear.  Retired.  And I can assure you the commission is strictly honorary.”


    “You didn’t invent epsilon, did you?”


    “Of course I did my dear, of course I did.  It was an exercise.”


    “Yes, but an exercise conducted by who?”


    “By whom, I think you mean.”


    “You’re not going to tell us are you?”


    “There is nothing to tell.  You want epsilon, I have epsilon.  You want to destroy the guild.  I don’t.  The history of epsilon isn’t really relevant to the conversation.”  He sipped his tea with a smile.  “I’m afraid you’ve come here to no purpose.”


    Leo leaned back.  “No, the real question is why do we know about epsilon?”


    Vishnu looked at Leo with newfound respect.  “My, you’re a bright child, aren’t you?”


    Ollu looked at Leo, questions in her eyes.  He shrugged.  “If we accept that he is who Ramona thinks he is, then nothing he does is without a reason.  He was assigned the task of creating epsilon, he didn’t use it but he did let people know it existed.  None of that was an accident.  So, why did he do that?  Or rather, why did his political masters want that to happen?”


    Vishnu just smiled.


    “It was a warning.”  Everyone looked at Craig.  “The Guild was getting too big for it’s britches and the UK decided to show them the limits of their power.”   He fiddled with his teacup for a second.  “Haven’t you ever wondered why the Guild allows local governments to exist?”


    Ramona was shocked.  “ALLOWS!  We do what we want on Raeburn, we don’t care what the Guild allows!”


    “And you got banned.  Don’t you think other polities know that?  The Guild has the power to make or break governments.  But they don’t.  Why?”


    Ollu smacked the table.  “Because they can’t.  Epsilon is their Sword of Damocles!”


    Vishnu smiled.  “I just love the classics, don’t you?”