Marlo Petrak

Overview

Marlo Petrak’s day had just taken a horrible turn. Charged with finishing the wiring on the last of the alien bricks in the transport’s sealed rear compartment, working late and alone because the job was behind and nobody liked being near the things, it was his misfortune to run into Six. Not that he saw him. That was the whole problem.

One moment there was the hum of the compartment and the cold weight of a brick in his hands. The next there was a hand over his mouth, an arm across his throat, and the deck coming up to meet his face while a man he never got a look at rode him down with the patient economy of someone who had done this before. He went under counting, and lost.

He woke trussed in his own gauge wire, which he might have found funny on a better night. Outside, the compound was ending. Something had walked through it like a hand sweeping a table clear, and through the hull he could hear the exact music of everything he understood going wrong at once, shouted orders, dead systems whining, small-arms fire pattering off the plating like rain. Then strangers were coming up the ramp he had helped power, someone dropped into the pilot’s seat, and a voice told everyone to buckle up.

They took him with them. Petrak spent the climb to orbit lashed in a hold full of the same alien bricks he had just spent a shift wiring, while a pilot he had never met threw the ship sideways to dodge two blobs of the substance that eats metal on contact. He does not know these people. He does not know where they are taking him. He knows he is alive, which on the evidence of the last hour he has decided to count as a win, and that wherever this is going, he is going too. As cargo. To be asked things.

The flight to the station took three hours, and Petrak spent all of them lashed in the hold while the people who had taken him worked around him as though he were part of the cargo manifest. One of them wandered aft partway through, tracing the wire runs out of the navigation computer toward the rear compartment, toward the exact job Petrak had been finishing when the lights went out for him. Nobody stopped to ask the man who had laid those wires what they were for. Another of them sat patching up his own injuries. On the approach, rather than wait the few minutes for the docking ring to seat, the one who had choked him opened an airlock and left through it, crossing hard vacuum to the station on his own thrusters. Petrak revised his working assessment of these people. Whatever else they were, patient was not on the list.

He had built a theory during the climb that he had been taken by criminals, which at least ran on rules he understood, and the theory held right up to the moment the people who took him handed him across to a Federal Marshal and did paperwork about it. Whatever this was, it was official. That was worse. The ship he had helped wire went into federal quarantine at Docking Bay 36. His captors were given twenty-four hours of leave and two hundred credits each, and went to the entertainment district for steak and lobster. Petrak was given a cell.

Not a cell block. A small brig behind Julija Borja’s desk at the Marshal’s Office, a cupboard with a door in it, sited so that he could see the whole office and the whole office could see him. At five in the morning the people who had ended his life as he understood it filed in and stood ten feet away and argued about jurisdiction. He listened to Six refuse to answer questions on the grounds of classified corporate orders, and cite station regulation by clause number at a Federal Marshal. He listened to Borja cross the hall and take Holger Graeme apart at conversational volume through a wall that stopped none of it, and to Graeme explain, in the flat voice of a man who has made this argument before and lost, that company policy sent every report to the station manager rather than the Marshal Service. He listened to Borja work through Six’s written statement line by line with pedantic scrutiny, asking aloud for things the man had already put in writing, and to Six getting visibly annoyed at being asked questions he had already answered.

Marlo Petrak was the only person in that building who had been on Thides III with a brick in his hands, and nobody asked him anything at all. Not one question. He was scenery at somebody else’s meeting.

Then the station changed hands, and did it twice over in the same hour. A company called Pratrock Dynamics, which Petrak had never heard of and had no reason to, bought MacMillian outright, and Solveig Kaufer read the announcement out over station-wide comms telling everyone to go to their quarters. In the same minutes his own employer’s drop ships detached from a pair of newly arrived transports and locked onto the hull, and Kinetic Logistics infantry and backpack-deployed combat robots came aboard behind them. The gate went under lockdown, every ship on the pad was grounded, the station manager was already dead at his own desk, and two decks away Daniela Akkermans put a knife into the neck of the Federal Marshal who had been holding him. Petrak went from working for a company running an illegal operation to working for the armed wing of a corporate acquisition without moving, without being asked, and without being told a thing.

Somewhere in the middle of it the door of his cell opened, and the man who had choked him unconscious in a dark compartment on Thides III was standing in it with an axe, letting him out. He had been rescued. From his own employer’s soldiers. By his kidnapper. He was given about as long to think about that arrangement as it takes to read it, and then went where he was pointed, because every other argument he could construct ended in a corridor with soldiers in it.

They put him back on the ship. The same ship, second time aboard it, still cargo, still nobody’s priority. He was tied to a bunk in the crew quarters while a vortex tore itself open in space beside the station and the whole of the Thides System was replaced by the shifting colours of hyperspace, and the gate closed behind him with him on the wrong side of it. The dead Marshal’s evidence duffel sat on the deck within reach. Six sat across the compartment and said nothing at all.

Ambushed, throttled, trussed in his own gauge wire, flown off a planet, handed to the law, filed behind a desk, left in a cupboard through a shouting match about paperwork, liberated by the wrong side and stolen a second time. From the compound to the compartment to the cell to the bunk, through every pair of hands he has passed through, nobody had yet asked Marlo Petrak a single question.

Then somebody did, and he immediately wished they had not.

The man who had choked him unconscious on Thides III came and sat down with him in hyperspace, took the gag out, gave him water and a ration pack, and cut the chain between his handcuffs with a vibro-axe in one stroke, leaving the bracelets on his wrists. Then he asked questions. Petrak answered them. He was a subcontractor. He wired things. He had been hired to prepare the ship for destruction, on an order that came down from a man called Doug. The alien device in the cockpit was nothing to do with him, that was Gary Johnson, the systems man, the one they called when the ship needed the clever work.

None of this was enough. Six stood up mid-answer, walked to the nearest airlock, opened the inner door, came back, and took hold of Petrak by the collar. What saved him was Ronin Sanchez, who got a grip on him and won the pull. Six explained, in the flat voice of a man reading out a maintenance report, that Petrak was not useful and was therefore nothing but a consumption of resources, and that the airlock was the logical solution to that. Petrak offered everything he had. Five credits. He could fix security systems. Gary Johnson, again, louder. Ronin talked Six down and took custody of him.

Six closed the airlock, came back, and smiled at him. It was the first smile Petrak had ever received from a man who had clearly read about smiling and never once attempted it. Then Six welcomed him to the crew.

“Welcome to the crew, Marlo. I will not space you. Until the end of your probation.”

Nobody else in the compartment appeared to find anything wrong with that sentence. Rock Lavey carried on sorting a medical kit. Somewhere forward, the ship’s own alien navigation device continued quietly deciding where they were all going. Petrak, who had been employed nine days earlier to wire a cargo compartment and go home, understood that he had just been given terms.

He has been earning it since. He cleaned the ship’s only toilet. He was handed a scrounged spacesuit and a loading torch and sent out onto the hull in hyperspace to weld patches over the blast damage, and he nearly came off the ship three times doing it. Somewhere in the four days between the station and Corwin, Marlo Petrak stopped being cargo and became the newest and least willing member of the crew of The Albatross, on probation, with the cuffs still on his wrists.

Then the ship reached somewhere with air and streets, and Marlo Petrak did something nobody had let him do since Thides III: he chose. The crew went into Aethel Starport and he stayed aboard, because a man in a prison jumpsuit and Marshal bracelets does not walk through a scanner lobby, and then he sat down at the terminal and made himself useful on purpose. He re-keyed the ship’s security to the crew’s biometrics, caught Six trying to code the locks to himself alone, and combed the planetary directories until he found the Monroe everyone was looking for. His kidnappers took his findings and walked off to use them. That part felt familiar.

What happened next did not. A junk dealer with a baton on her hip came back to the ship, took a device to his wrists, and on the second attempt the Federal Marshal handcuffs he had worn through every escalation since the compound clicked open. Nobody alive was supposed to be able to do that. He has decided not to think too hard about what that means about her. And then, cuffs off, in a starport with six Marshals and a directory full of transports going anywhere, with every reason and every means to vanish, Marlo Petrak stood in front of the people who had choked him, bagged him, stolen him twice, and nearly spaced him, and asked to stay. He said it plainly: his former employers will see him as a loose end, and standing behind Six is statistically the safest place to be in any situation that turns violent. The crew accepted this without ceremony. He went out for civilian clothes with the man who once opened an airlock at him, and watched him eat a birthday cake in a paper hat.

What he has had these days to establish, between the toilet, the hull, and the cake, is that none of these people think anything is wrong.

Rock Lavey spent a day building a hospital out of packing crates and moving blankets, bolting them to the deck so they would not fly about during hard manoeuvres, and was visibly pleased with it. Ronin Sanchez went through a glove box, found a pair of fuzzy dice, and hung them in the cockpit of a stolen ship with no transponder, no registered name, an engine that tears its own holes in space, and a prisoner in the hold. At some point the four of them held a serious discussion about what to call the vessel and settled on the Albatross, and somebody observed that this was either poetic or deeply ominous, and then nobody followed that up. They just started using it.

Six found the ship’s media library and sat through the entire promotional welcome video without moving, from the first frame to the last, the way other men read a briefing. Later he put on a suit and went out onto the hull. In hyperspace. For something to do. Petrak had been sent out there himself with a scrounged suit and a loading torch to weld patches over the blast damage, and had come close to leaving the ship entirely on three separate occasions, and Six walked the exterior of a moving vessel in the between-space with the unbothered competence of a man checking his tyres, cataloguing the empty weapon mounts and describing them over the radio.

Then the ship took itself. Petrak wires things for a living, which meant he was the only person aboard watching the console rather than the window, and what he watched was two competent pilots trying to take back control of their own vehicle and being overruled, again, and again, and again, by a twenty-sided lump of somebody else’s technology. The Albatross went down into a crack in a crater wall with the rock close enough on both sides to touch, landed itself on a pad nobody knew was there, and let the ground swallow it. At no point did anyone aboard suggest that this was unusual.

He stayed with the ship for what followed, which meant he did not see it and only heard it. Shouting. The particular flat crack of the beam weapons he had spent his career installing around other people’s property. Something heavy falling over. A silence, then more shouting, closer. And then the sound that he will keep, which was somebody cutting the roof off the hangar from the outside, one hinge at a time, while the ship sat under it. The bay blew out into vacuum when the last cut went through. A minute later Six came back in through the airlock and told Ronin they could leave, in the tone of a man who has unjammed a door.

Somewhere out past the crater, running for a system he had never heard of, the crew picked up a piece of routine business news and read it aloud. Kinetic Logistics had been dissolved. Absorbed back into its parent company, whoever that is. The firm that hired Marlo Petrak, sent him to a compound on Thides III to wire alien blocks into a ship that was scheduled to be destroyed, and then left him there to be taken, does not exist any more.

He was kidnapped for being a Kinetic Logistics employee. He is not one. He is not anything. Nobody is coming to trade for him, nobody is looking for him, and the only person who has ever physically protected Marlo Petrak did it by winning a wrestling match against a colleague. He is on probation with four people for whom this has been a fairly ordinary week, and the cuffs are still on his wrists, because the only man alive who could take them off is dead.

Motivations & Secrets

What he wants is simple and entirely reactive: to still be aboard tomorrow. Six told him in plain terms that being unuseful makes him a consumption of resources, and then demonstrated what that means by opening an airlock. Everything Petrak has done since runs off that sentence. He cleaned the toilet. He went out on the hull with a loading torch and nearly came off the ship three times. He volunteers. He is not loyal to these people and has no reason to be, he is a man performing usefulness at a crew who have set a very literal price on the alternative.

He is also, as of this session, employed by nobody. Kinetic Logistics has been dissolved into its parent company. The firm that hired him, sent him to Thides III, and left him there to be taken no longer exists. There is no employer to ransom him, no colleagues looking, and no job to go back to. Whether he has understood the full weight of that yet is open.

What he actually offers: security systems. It was the first thing he said when he was trying not to be spaced, and it happens to be true and happens to matter. The crew are flying a stolen ship with no transponder, a severed alien navigation feed, and an open network bridge into a Pratrock Dynamics facility. Petrak wires and defeats exactly that class of system for a living.

The open questions, all Tim’s:

• Did he tell the truth? He named Doug and Gary Johnson with an open airlock behind him. Fear produces answers, not necessarily accurate ones, and nothing he said has been checked.
• Did he tell everything? He was wiring alien blocks and external detonator lines for a company running a covert trade. A man that close to the work who claims to know nothing about it is either telling the truth about being a subcontractor or is a better liar than he looks.
• What happens when the fear wears off? His compliance is currently indistinguishable from terror. Whether there is a person underneath who resents this, reports it, or grows into the crew is unwritten.
• The handcuffs. Resolved (Session 7): Roselyn Monroe removed the bracelets with her device, on the second attempt. That a junk dealer on Aethel Starport can open Federal Marshal hardware is its own new question, and it is hers, not his.
• Why did he stay? The stated reasoning (loose end; the safest place is behind Six) is perfectly rational and perfectly deniable. Whether there is loyalty growing under the arithmetic, or an agenda, remains Tim’s.

Appearances

• Session 3 (Session 03 - Buckle Up Motherfuckers) — Ambushed and choked unconscious by Six in the transport’s rear compartment during the compound raid, bound with his own wire, and carried off Thides III as the crew’s first live prisoner.

• Session 4 (Session 04 - The Case of the Missing Courtesan) — Delivered to MacMillian Station IV and taken into federal custody. He spent the session in the small brig behind Julija Borja’s desk at the Marshal’s Office, visible to the crew throughout their interrogation. Still un-interrogated on screen, and still the only living person the crew have taken from the Kinetic Logistics Compound.

• Session 5 (Session 05 - Hostile Takeover) — Held in the Marshal’s Office cell through the Pratrock takeover of the station — Pratrock Dynamics acquiring MacMillian while his own employer Kinetic Logistics supplied the boarding force. During the coup Six released him from the holding cell and he was taken aboard the crew’s ship. He ends the session tied to a bunk in the crew quarters, awake, staring at Six with profound unease, the Marshal’s evidence duffel beside him. Still never questioned.

• Session 6 (Session 06 - The Albatross Takes Flight) — Finally interrogated, nearly spaced, and taken onto the crew. Six questioned him in hyperspace, cut his handcuff chain, and on judging him unproductive dragged him toward an open airlock. Ronin Sanchez physically intervened and won the struggle. Petrak gave up Doug (his supervisor, who ordered the ship destroyed) and Gary Johnson (the ex-Pratrock Dynamics researcher who installed the Alien Navigation Device). Accepted as a probationary crew member, set to cleaning the toilet and then to welding hull patches during the transit. See The Airlock Interrogation.

• Session 7 (Session 07 - The Goodwin Contract) — Freed, and stayed anyway. Re-keyed the ship’s security to crew biometrics (catching Six’s attempt to code it to himself alone), found Roselyn Monroe in the planetary directories — the lead that delivered the evidence — and had his Marshal handcuffs removed by her device, second attempt, one bracelet having been cut in half. Then announced he wanted to stay with the crew, reasoning that his former employers will treat him as a loose end and that standing behind Six is statistically the safest place in any violent situation. Went into the starport with Six and Ronin Sanchez for civilian clothes and was present for the birthday cake. Whether the clothes were actually acquired is unstated in the export.

Relationships

• Serves Kinetic Logistics — Compound technician handling the alien-tech installation aboard the transport.
• Rescued Ronin Sanchez — Ronin physically stopped [[Six]] dragging him into an open airlock, then took custody of him.
• Located at The Albatross — Probationary crew member aboard the ship he was captured on.
• Serves Doug — His supervisor at [[Kinetic Logistics]], who ordered the ship destroyed.