Galactically speaking, piracy is a problem. Not in an abstract, theoretical way but rather in an absolutely practical sense. It is a daily occurrence in every single system that has days, which is to say that it is a daily occurrence literally everywhere. The levels of piracy are varied of course but you can rest assured (or not, hopefully) that anywhere in the Galactic Empire you happen to be an act of piracy is never more than thirty six standard hours or 3 light years away from you at any given moment. In its scale it is equivalent to living upstairs from a bodega which is robbed at an average rate of four times per second and a half. This reality has led certain scholars to wonder why punishment for these crimes hasn’t been increased (and also led, purely coincidentally so we are assured, to an increase in scholarship-related accidental falls down previously unfallable elevator shafts) while other scholars postulate that the pirates themselves are actually the government, and that the Official Galactic Empire is the non-governmental organization. If they were to learn about the true council of leaders, each of whom heads a relatively large pirate organization in some capacity or other, they would rejoice in their nearness to the mark. They would also soon find themselves in the brig of a pirate ship being carried swiftly off to whatever maker they chose to believe in. It is important to note that while piracy as piracy is a massive problem for the Galactic Empire, it is also for a variety of reasons the only thing holding it together. Life goes as piracy does, or so goes the old piratical adage, and those who live and profit by it either wholeheartedly agree or agree in ignorance while blissfully living out their numbered days.
The educated reader might be asking themselves why piracy is a problem then, and while the nature of the question is commendable the reader really should wait until the writer is done explaining before asking questions which the writer clearly intended to answer from the very beginning after getting some necessary exposition out of the way. Galactically speaking, piracy is a problem because… it is gradually slipping out of the hands of those who controlled it to begin with. After years of having a monopoly on intergalactic criminal activities, the leaders of the largest gangs have started losing valued personnel to entrepreneurial outfits and other similar activities. With the absolute lack of any sort of official security presence, which of course was heretofore a boon to the agency of piracy, it is becoming increasingly up to the pirate gangs themselves to root out freelance piracy in the galaxy. This reduces their ability to pirate, and also opens the door for other new gangs: ones who haven’t made it onto the enforcement radar can visit worlds which are used to being pirated and take the spoils collected for the purpose but going unstolen due to piratical infighting. These new, smaller outfits simply do not put as much back into the system as the larger, established enterprises and so the Galactic Empire’s economy is beginning to crumble ever so slightly and ever so slowly. Galactically speaking, piracy is a problem.
When fuel explodes, there is very little warning. There is also very little left around afterwards when a particularly large batch of it explodes. The Albright was not a small ship. Planetary shuttles were (re)designed to carry large amounts of cargo. And Phllia is a planet whose sole existence is for the purposes of mining and loading and shipping precious, deadly fuel. In other words, on a personal level, obsessive levels of personal care are highly recommended in just about all work-related circumstances upon landing. James had no experience handling fuel and no experience taking personal care and no experience in work-related circumstances. It was an explosion waiting to happen, and as he sat in the freezing compactor bay waiting for the six foot by six foot by six foot cubes of fuel ice to come up the belt next to him, he reached down towards a small pile of snow which had collected on the output, next to his hair. He scooped some up, noting that it had a peculiarly beautiful iridescence to it. He packed it into a ball. He reached his arm back to throw it at one particular man, with a scar over his eye but not much else dangerous going for him perceptively, who was looking the other way. The fact that he might plausibly blame someone else was central to James’ decision. He launched his arm forward and disappointingly became aware that it wasn’t moving. He looked back at his cocked hand to see what the problem was. He found Gareth scowling at him and slowly tightening a vice grip around the delicate bones in James’ wrist.
Due to the cold he hadn’t noticed the initial contact, but he was now becoming dimly aware of a great wave of pain rolling towards his neural receptors and directly resulting from Gareth, with his gargantuan hands exerting an ungodly amount of pressure on his person. Rather than risk a (very possible) breakage he calmly looked into Gareth’s narrowed eyes and diplomatically requested him to “LET GO OF MY WRIST YOU COW-SIZED WOODPECKER!” Gareth responded by releasing some of the pressure, while using his other hand to gently remove the snowball from James’ still-purpling digits and set it slowly on the ground. Then he slapped James as hard as it was possible to slap him. As the room was freezing, Gareth’s hand making full contact with James’ inexperienced and fully exposed face filled the room with a resounding “snap”. It also resulted in a large bruise and not a few tears on Jason’s part.
“That would have killed us, yeh idiot.”
“A snowball?”
“A snowball made of frozen fuel.”
“What?”
“Frozen fuel, scraped off a block. Yeh made a snowball out of it and were about to throw it at Grant. And it would have blown this whole buildin’ up- yeh and me with it.”
“Well…I…it seems like they should clean it up.”
“Why? So no one throws it at other people? Not many kids come in here, yeh see.”
“I’m not a kid…”
“Yeh made a snowball on the job and were abou’ to throw it ‘cross a gigantic freezer while waitin’ fer big blocks of gas that could explode if we look at ’em funny. Yer a kid until I say yer not.”
“Someone should still clean it up.”
“Yeh know what? Yer right.”
James enjoyed being right. He usually was, and it was always a thrill to have someone who’d been bested admit to their failings. On Malyria he would have treated himself to a coffee. There was no coffee here. Only the antistatic broom and dustpan set Gareth had handed him, along with a solid set of directions as to which way the hazardous disposal port was located. He looked around the hangar. There were little piles of the stuff all over the place, built up over years of offloading, and Gareth had been nonspecific as to how much James needed to clean up. First he tried to only clean up the snowball Gareth had set down, and sat back down in his chair. He was rudely awakened to the fact that Gareth had intended he should clean the entire space for future generations by way of a massive hand being wrapped around his throat and leveraging him onto his feet. The broom and dustpan were once again thrust into his hands and with a grumbling mind James began one of the longest days of his life.
He was called back to work as the hangar’s buzzer sounded, indicating the impending arrival of fuel blocks. Gareth pulled him out of the way and told him where to stand with the handcart. The fuel needed to be stacked in the hangar before being loaded into the shuttle and taken up to the Albright. Two hours to load and four hours between shuttle runs were standard Gasocorp procedure, and with a full, skilled crew this might be possible. Given that the average Gasocorp field crew lost two workers to the local spacer pub within an hour of landing, and that orbital rotations often necessitated clandestine and unsanctioned crew rotation for rest, a more reasonable estimation of a loading time was in the neighborhood of six hours. Gareth and James’ crew almost managed this, and it was considered a great victory when their first load was out of the hangar before sunset. It was then pointed out that the sun set every thirty-six hours on Phllia and everyone became much more sober. They’d been on-world for twelve. Drinks were promptly passed. There was no need for ice.
