Fenn Nadir

Ironhelm

1

Ironhelm station was one of a kind. In a universe of rundown, malfunctioning and dangerous stations it was the most decrepit and corrupt. Every system on the station was held together by tape and a miracle. The life support and gravity crashed almost daily, leaving the atmosphere thick with the stench of unwashed bodies and the acrid smoke of the fires used to keep the poorer sections of the station warm enough to survive.

Most of the wall panels had been torn away over time. Many had short circuits and bypasses wired into them while others had the wiring torn out for other uses. Sparks shooting from panels and small fires were pretty common and mostly ignored by the populace.

Fenn had been trapped in this scragging pit for 6 months now. It was the longest he'd been stuck in a single place in his life. His parents had always traveled constantly, jumping from station to station looking for the score that would turn their life around. They always dragged Fenn with them. Ironhelm ended that quest as they succumbed to the black bile plague. Plagues almost never happened on most stations but the cheap bastards who ran this place let their disease filters shut down.

Fenn was 12 in standard sol time with shoulder length red hair and pale freckled skin. He was thin, far too thin. He was short as well, even for a 12 year old. Most planetsiders would think he was 8 standard.

Fenn wore a skintight maroon jumpsuit, which was a fairly high tech pressure suit. It would protect him from vacuums for a few moments and absorbed impacts to an extent. Even better, it had an emergency air bubble. Fenn was never sure how his parents got a hold of the thing.

The suit was the only clean thing on him. He wore a backpack filled with scraps, wires, circuit boards and anything else he found that looked interesting. He had a tool belt he'd stolen a few stations ago crowded with dozens of tools, mostly small spanners and screwdrivers but there were some hammers and more high tech tools buried in the disorganized mess.

At the moment Fenn was looking around a corner at a merchant stand in the comparatively rich blue sector. This is where all the best merchants set up shop. He was focused on one thing; a 5mm 330W power coupler using the barium network interface. This was the only one he'd managed to find on this whole damned station. He'd tried to buy it but the bastards tried charging ten times what it was worth.

Fenn looked at his smart chrono and frowned. It was 12:34. The shutdown splice should have gone off 10 minutes ago. "I must have broke the scragging thing," he muttered and turned to leave when a claxon sounded.

A garbled computer voice then began to speak. "Emergency... Emergency... The life support systems are currently offline. Please report to the nearest shelter."

Fenn grinned as a man stormed past him. "Damn engineers, can't they keep the scragging system online for 5 minutes?" Several other people followed, mostly merchants and a few of the richer customers. Most people couldn't afford the shelter fee.

A minute later and the claxon sounded again. "Warning.. Gravity systems offline. You may experience 0 G conditions until repaired."

Fenn kicked off the floor and used the wall to stop around 5 feet in the air. He slipped a small pressure tank from his belt and turned the nozzle, releasing a jet of air that blew him towards the shop. As he did so several other poorer people kicked off walls, gliding to some of the seedier shops to try and find food and clothing. The intelligent beings avoided the big shops, they all had defense systems and most of them were lethal. That violated intergalactic law but in places this far from Sol 3 that didn't really matter much.