Tier Zero

“Estimated time to departure: five minutes. Please pay gate fees or defer payment for a three-hundred-credit fee. Thank you for using Advantia Gate Systems,” the AI announced over the comms, causing me to lift my head.

I noticed we were much closer to the gate now, and the scale of it was mind-boggling. It had to be capable of transporting a small moon.

I pulled up the message blinking in the corner of my vision.

Advantia Gate Systems Gate Fee: 2,600 credits Discount: 100 credits Total: 2,500 credits

My jaw hung slack. That was five weeks of rent for my cubby back on Beher II. How the hell was I supposed to pay that?

“Hey, Amiri, I don’t have that many credits. I don’t have any credits at all, actually.”

She looked at me, then through me with the telltale look of someone looking through their system.

“Well, guess when you get to the other side, you’ll be sent off to a slave camp for a few years to pay it off.”

“What?” I started panicking again. “They do that?”

She snickered at me, then got that distant look again.

“No, I’m fucking with you. Did you not just hear the AI? They just open an account, charge you another three hundred credits, and if you don’t pay, they’ll eventually sue you for whatever you owe after however many gate fees you’ve skipped. Besides, I got it.”

“That wasn’t funny,” I said bitterly. “I’m a bit on edge, you know.”

The message changed to PAID, then vanished. A new tab appeared in the corner of my vision labeled Transactions.

I focused on it.

Advantia Gate Systems: Gate Fee Amiri Stardust: 2,500 credits Paid

After closing the window, I looked toward Amiri. She was clearly looking at something in her implant, though her expression was hard to read. Her eyes kept flicking around, and with every movement her eyebrows seemed to drop lower. Confusion, maybe. Or intense concentration. It was hard to tell.

“You are cleared for jump to the Grinnadean System in fifteen seconds. Thank you for using Advantia Gate Systems, a service provided by the Advantia Faction.”

The gate in front of us came alive as mechanisms rotated and the space within it seemed to stretch somehow. The stars ahead elongated and rippled like reflections on water. I hadn’t seen anything like this when the other ships used the gate, and it seemed like something that should have been obvious from anywhere. But this close, reality itself seemed to twist.

Then everything flashed white, as if the light had swallowed everything.

Elsewhere

“I’m sorry, Captain. What do you mean the faction denied our request to detain Lucas?”

Captain Trameris stood centered in the display, his hands clasped behind his back. His short hair was streaked with white at the sides, and his uniform was wrinkle-free, every line sharply pressed.

“You’ll excuse me if I don’t feel like playing twenty questions with you, Investigator,” Captain Trameris said, making no effort to hide his disgust. “My report was filed, and I am in no mood to speak with you. Being fined a million credits for firing on a civilian shuttlecraft will make someone less patient.”

Investigator Voss leaned back against her desk and crossed her arms.

“I’ve read the report. Twice, actually, and it still doesn’t make sense. From what you filed, I’m supposed to believe Amiri Stardust is alive, and the faction found no black-market or stolen equipment.”

“Again, Investigator,” Captain Trameris said, leaning in, “I am not playing this game. Someone needs to find my lost capital and put it back in my account. That someone is you.”

Investigator Voss sighed and held up an index finger to Captain Trameris. A moment later, she nodded and focused on him again.

“The funds are being approved now.” She paused. “Now will you please explain what the actual fuck happened?”

“My report is pretty clear, Investigator.” The captain straightened as he spoke. “The faction scanned the shuttle and its occupants and found nothing. I don’t know if he dumped the device or if he has some way to hide it from sensors, but he and this Amiri Stardust, who, may I remind you, I was led to believe was murdered, were let go.”

And that’s it?” the investigator asked. “Our request was denied without a single closer examination of the shuttle?”

Captain Trameris chuckled and shook his head. “Yeah. Turns out if you accuse someone of murdering a person who is clearly alive and sitting in the shuttle, you lose all credibility.”

“Thank you for your time, Captain,” Voss said, leaning back against her desk. “Also, thank you for the quick response. I’ll be filing a golden review for your trouble.”

She stepped out of her office as people hurried to carry out her orders, then headed toward the command center, where several screens were replaying parts of the investigation.

“Computer... do you have any further information on the device or what happened to Amiri, given the new evidence?”

“Investigator Voss. Telemetry from Amiri Stardust’s implant has been re-examined in response to the new information. Analysis is ongoing. However, I can state with high confidence that the implant’s control software was being altered in some way by the unknown device. As for the device itself, there is no new data regarding its nature, origin, or manufacture.”

“Fantastic,” Investigator Voss said with visible exasperation. “Do we at least know what these alterations imply?”

“Affirmative. The alterations would have removed all control software from Amiri Stardust’s implant, leaving it without skill caps, remote command access, or monitoring telemetry.”

She crossed her arms, her brows furrowing deeply. “How is that possible without killing the host?”

“Unknown. Available telemetry is insufficient to determine survivability factors. However, existing models indicate that without these controls, increased implant activity would cause progressive neurological degradation, potentially resulting in psychosis, severe cognitive instability, or permanent brain damage.”

“You’re saying she could go insane?”

“Affirmative.”

When the flash subsided, we were on the other side of the gate. The display showed the gate sitting 7.4 kilometers away.

What caught my attention, though, was the spacing between the ships around us. The other shuttles were roughly five hundred meters away, while larger vessels like cruisers had been placed much farther out.

Amiri pinched the bridge of her nose for a moment while I started unbuckling. She looked down at my hands as I undid the harness, then back up at me.

“You want me to fly right now?”

“Yeah,” I said as I raised the armrest and slid out. “You said you’d take it from here, right? I’ve never approached a space station before. I figured it would be a lot easier for you to handle it.”

I stood there waiting for her to move, but she hadn’t even reached for her harness.

“There a problem?”

“Yeah... okay, so I have a confession.” She gave me a sheepish smile. “I actually can’t fly. Well, I can. I understand how, but I don’t actually have the skills to input the navigation. I could do it manually, but it would take me about three hours before I felt comfortable with the route.”

I slowly sat back down, still facing her.

“So what, that was bullshit about having a plan to fly yourself off the planet? Un-fucking-believable. What, you pretended so you wouldn’t look like you actually needed me?”

Anger flashed across her face for a moment. “No. Fuck, no, you idiot. I could have gotten here without you. I can still do it. Once you entered the picture, though, a smooth flight off-planet was no longer reasonable.”

“Look,” I sputtered angrily, “I’m sorry I ruined your life, but the least you could have done was be a teensy bit honest with me.”

She deflated and looked down, which suddenly made me feel like shit.

“I thought you’d figure it out,” she said softly.

I frowned and looked down too. “Figure what out?”

She looked back up at me with that confused, contemplative expression.

“You really don’t get how implants work, do you?”

I looked up at her and sighed. At some point, I’d hunched over with my elbows resting on my legs.

“Look, like everyone else, we were told how implants worked. I just didn’t care enough to pay attention. It’s a long story. So what exactly is it that I don’t know?”

She straightened and gave me a faint smile. “Must be nice. Anyway, I have... had a tier-two subscription, which capped out at around two hundred thousand skill points. Plus the two corporate boosts gave me enough extra points for warp-drive mechanics and repair. I didn’t have skill points to waste on piloting. If that were the case, everyone would be pilots.”

I looked out the viewport. Vessels were zipping in, aligning themselves with whatever destinations they were headed toward, then accelerating before engaging their micro-warp drives and disappearing into the distance.

With that, I started buckling myself back in.

“We should probably figure out where we’re going and leave before we end up in a slave colony for loitering.”

Her grin widened almost comically. She pulled up the system map and pointed to a station near Grinnadean II, Moon IV.

“This station. I know it. It’s a repair station, so we can have this shuttle brought back to life. I was planning on selling it and joining a free-agent group, but...”

She patted the cracked and faded synthetic leather affectionately.

“I’ve grown attached to this pile of shit.”

I smiled and chuckled as I entered the coordinates, realizing for the first time what she meant. My implant was doing a lot of heavy lifting I hadn’t even noticed before, calculating orbits, current positions, and accounting for the light-delay between us and the station.

I wasn’t consciously thinking through any of it, but I could somehow feel that my mind wasn’t being skipped in the process either. It was a strange sensation.

We aligned quickly, and I began accelerating along the vector I’d just input. I activated the micro-warp drive for the third time and, to be honest, almost expected it not to work.

Leaning back, I clasped my hands behind my head and turned to say something to Amiri, but she was back in her system.

“Um, you’ve been in your system more than usual. Is something wrong?”

“I’m not...” She trailed off for a moment, looking at something with a pinched expression. “Tell me something. What’s your skill cap?”

I sat there staring at her for a moment. I had no idea what she meant.

“Um, not sure. Could you tell me how I can find out? I haven’t seen any mention of a cap so far.”

She finally turned and focused on me.

“It’ll be under Basic Information. The display should include your name, carrier, and manufacturer, along with your current accumulated skill points. Under that, it should list your cap and tier.”

It took me a moment, but I finally got the Basic Information window to appear. Except the only information it showed was my name, 114,255 accumulated skill points, and that my implant had fully integrated sometime during the investigation at the gate.

I closed the window and focused on Amiri, who was staring at me expectantly.

“I’m not seeing a cap or tier or anything. Just basically my name and accumulated skill points.”

She gave me a quizzical look before her expression flattened.

“Yeah. Manufacturer still says Aethis, and Carrier is still there, but it’s darkened out. My tier and cap are what I’ve been confused about. I thought maybe I’d lost the ability to queue skills, so I started a standard mercenary skill package.”

She paused.

“All two hundred and fifty-seven thousand skill points queued without a single error. But Cap says Error, and my Tier says zero.”

“That’s, um, great, I guess,” I said distractedly, understanding the implications before something she’d said finally sank in.

“Wait, what? Standard mercenary package? What the hell is that?”

She looked at me flatly.

“That is what you got from what I said? Of all the...” She paused and took a deep breath. “Does your implant not supply the hundred and fifty or so path packages?”

“Uh,” I said articulately as I quickly ran through my skill tree. “I’m not seeing anything like that at all.”

“Hmm, hold on,” she said, looking through her own interface. “I think I can... yeah, here.”

Amiri Stardust would like to share an <ERROR> with you. Please hold... configuring...

Handshake required to complete configuration. Continue? Y/N

“Well,” Amiri said expectantly. “Did you get it?”

I raised my index finger while staring at the prompt. “Uh, interesting. It doesn’t look like my implant knows what you’re sending it. Well, let’s see how it handles it.”

I selected Yes. The prompt glitched a couple of times before a new one appeared.

Patch complete. Skill Packages are now available.

Amiri Stardust has shared: Standard Mercenary Package

Packages Available: 1

Skill Point Cost: 257,760

Estimated Training Time: 8h 57m

Train Standard Mercenary Package? Y/N

“Huh,” I said, staring at the prompt before looking through it at Amiri. “I can’t believe that worked. Should I train it? It says it’ll take around nine hours.”

She nodded, and I shrugged before selecting Y.

“With our ability to train indefinitely,” she nearly whispered conspiratorially, “we should keep our training queues running at all times.”

We sat silently for the rest of the trip, which wasn’t very long. When the shuttle dropped out of micro-warp, I started burning hard to bleed off our velocity.

Something in the back made an ominous screeching clang. I looked over at Amiri. She turned, looked toward the rear of the shuttle, then back at me and shrugged, which gave me an overwhelming sense of security.

Hundreds of shuttles were entering and exiting the massive structure. Holographic signs floated everywhere, displaying animated advertisements for everything from self-sealing stem bolts to energy drinks. There was even one for Targove Prime Lumber, displaying the bluest wood I’d ever seen.

A rough female voice suddenly crackled over the comms.

“Salvaged shuttle belonging to Amiri Stardust, are you in need of repair service or scrap service?”

Amiri leaned in and replied professionally. “Requesting repair docking.”

The woman’s voice over the comms went up an octave. “Are you sure? Looks like scrap to me.”

Amiri scowled and spoke through her teeth. “I’m sure.”

The woman chuckled over the comms. “Your credits, I suppose. Please allow the docking AI to guide you in.”

When the AI requested control, I released the shuttle to it.

We were maneuvered toward one of the gates on the left and slowly sorted toward the lower of the four. I looked to the right, where a battle cruiser was slowly entering the massive gate in the center of the station.

The station itself was hard to describe. It looked like thousands of modular pieces had been bolted onto one enormous central structure.

As we entered, the shuttle in front of us stopped, then dropped straight down while we continued forward. We were eventually sorted into an internal gate, where the shuttle spun a hundred and eighty degrees as our landing gear screeched open beneath us. A moment later, we settled smoothly onto the deck.

Amiri unbuckled, flipped up her armrest, and slid out. Before stepping away, she stopped and grabbed my headrest.

“Keep your wits about you on stations, okay, newbie? That battlecruiser you saw? Those people are about to flood the promenade. Try to stay out of their way. Most of them are going to be itching for a fight.”