I didn't notice there was a problem until the clock hit midnight and mother and father had not returned. The housekeeper left at dinner time to go to her family on the lower levels, but didn't even stop to wait for my family. The newsfeeds suddenly shifted from the usual coverage of the war towards the news of my company. It's an old saying that any press must be good press, but not when it's being announced that the shareholders are holding me personally responsible for their debts as the sole heir.
As soon as the news hit the central network, my dataslab lit up with messages and calls. Uncles asking if I'm okay, aunts asking where I'm at, cousins recommending legal advice, legal firms sending me price estimates.
I didn't really know what to do other than jump up off the couch. I left the dataslab bleeping away for my attention. As I ran, my socks slipped on the hardwood floor and dug too deep on the carpet in my bedroom. My hands shook as I entered the code to my gunsafe and grabbed hold of my competition pistol. It was bulky, fired only weak rounds, and looked like something out of a fiction movie, but it was all I had.
I called a cab and flew to the nearest spaceport. The entertainment screen in the autocab had my face and name plastered all over it.
"Debts incurred nearing 4.3 billion creds."
The news went to commercial, so I was spared more of my face being blared back at me. I thought about my parents and why they weren't home. I thought about being called the primary stockholder.
Something had happened and now the entire Corporate Systems Authority was intent on blaming me for it.
I didn't know what to do.
I landed in the spaceport terminal and pulled an old ratty hoodie over my head. The walls of screens in the spaceport nearly surrounded my vision, and on a few I could see the interior of my family's apartment. The TV is still on. My dataslab still beeping away on the couch.
I paid no attention to anyone else around me, it didn't really matter if they were looking at me or not. All I new was that I wanted to leave, and had to find a ride quickly.
There was a jobs board with specific tasks that I had no idea how to complete. Engineer, cook, pilot, deckhand. None of it clicked as anything I could do. Nobody was asking for marksmen who could hit a target from 1500 meters with a pistol.
My pistol.
I whipped around only to see the autocab lifting off from the landing pad, disappearing into the smog. I felt my pocket and felt my heart sink.
The only defense I had left was to leave. I found a job listing for deckhand. Sounded easy enough. I half-ran, half-walked to the landing slick where their ship was parked. It was a massive, ugly freighter. Ninety percent cargo bay and zero percent comfort. I nearly reconsidered but the only sure bet I had to not wind up in debtor's prison was to leave.
I stammered my way through a conversation with the captain of the ship, made more difficult by the fact that the captain was a jevren only about a third of my height. I didn't know if I should kneel down to talk or if this was fine. It didn't matter.
I gritted my teeth and wiped sweat from my brow as I pushed and heaved the heavy crates of cargo onto the ship, up the grease-stained ramp and into the dingy cargo hold.
The captain yelled down from her seat on the bridge to strap in, and I complied. The seat was only slightly too small for me. Out the window, I could see a reporter crew tailed by a pair of Corporate Police, looking around like a pack of lost baby birds. They were onto me.
Please, oh please just take off already.
The ship shuddered and shook, but we made it off the ground. The smog filled in the distance between the ship and the tarmac below. Between myself and whatever punishment I might have had.
Within a matter of minutes, we were in orbit. I could see the silvery-brown horizon of Aethyll curve away from me as I floated in front of the window, reaction jets jar the ship that surrounds me while I stay in place, as if I'm suspended in midair by some infinite thread.
Before long, the planet was gone, replaced only by a shifting and wavering starfield. The spike drive whirred and shuddered below decks.
I didn't even know where we were going.