Nate sat alone in the back corner of a dingy little bar on the ship repair station orbiting his home planet, Caldania, staring wistfully out at a display screen showing space and the planet below them. The bar was just barely big enough for four small round tables. The lighting was dim and a haze of smoke filled the air. The haze was nice since it prevented him from seeing how dirty the place really was, and let him pretend it had been cleaned sometime in the past month. His table featured a lovely puddle of old beer that he could see his reflection in, sneering down at the patchwork of scars and the crude metallic eye that marred his hawkish features, he swatted at the puddle, soaking the grease stained sleeve of his coveralls, and sending a splash of cold running across the synthetic temperature sensors in his new prosthetic arm. The new arm was an ugly thing, a spindly set of silver alloyed bones supporting tight black bundles of synthetic muscle. Two years in the Void Corps and all he'd earned was a set of damned cybernetics and a medical discharge. His new eye and arm worked just as well as flesh and blood, better in some cases, but there was no way the Democratic Alliance of Free Colonies would tolerate cyborgs in combat positions. Anything they saw as sub-human was cut out and shipped home.

"Hey!" a rough voice shouted from across the bar. "Tinman! Pack it up, bus is leaving"

With a sigh of exasperation Nate gulped down the warm, flat, remnants of his beer and left the bar. The shuttle home was crammed into a tiny dock at the end of a short dingy hallway. The airlock cycled open with a wheeze, Nate shuffled into the ship and sat in a battered seat at the back. The ship was tiny, with enough seats for sixteen passengers and an aisle too narrow for two people to walk abreast running down the middle. The walls were a drab off yellow colour that he suspected used to be white and the cramped seats were upholstered in a light grey fabric. The whole ship had a stale slightly musty smell to it, like it was past due to have its air filters changed. The engine kicked on with a cough and set the whole frame vibrating. Much to his chagrin the man who had called to him earlier sat down beside him.

"I just can't figure it out Tinman" he said. "With all that steel plugged into your skull you'd think they'd have installed a clock so you wouldn't be so damn late to everything."

Nate ignored him, turning to look at the wall, and brushing his shaggy red hair away from his eyes. He didn't particularly care to keep his hair long but the length helped cover the scars crisscrossing the right side of his face, and the ugly metal sphere that sat where his right eye used to be.

The docking clamps unlatched with a hollow boom and the ship sputtered away from the station, filling the cabin with the soft grinding noise it always made when the engines fired. Nate was no engineer but he'd been working at the ship repair station long enough to know that something inside the ship was in need of some serious work. It hadn't quit yet though, but if it came apart mid-flight and killed them all that was fine by him. He caught someone staring at him halfway through the flight, it was a face he didn't recognize, most likely a new hire. His shift supervisor, Gary, sat next to the new guy. Nate could just barely make out what they were saying over the buzz of the ship's air recycling.

"The cyborg?That's Nate. He got shot to shit somewhere out past the new colonies, got that god awful metal shit hooked onto him and now he's here, working shipbuilding with the rest of us" said Gary.

The new guy nodded and whispered "Why didn't he go for cloned parts? All those cybernetics just aren't right."

"He says he has some kind of rare something or other that stops the cloned parts from taking. Personally, I think he just likes the metal. You watch the way he looks at a ship when it comes in, I swear he likes them more than he likes people."

The new guy shuddered. "Christ, last time we had folk get that fond of their hardware we had a war."

Nate shook his head, ever since the Construct Rebellions anyone who liked cutting edge technology, or had the misfortune of needing cybernetics was labeled as some kind of freak. Gary and the new guy continued to talk for the rest of the flight, going on and on about how awful it would be to be half machine, swapping stories about the Rebellions, and stating over and over how big of a mistake it had been to let sentient machines free. It was the same tired set of arguments that Nate had heard repeated his whole life. His grandfather had fought in the Rebellions and the old man had always been ready to preach about the horrors of artificial intelligence, or to berate an amputee for having the audacity to wear cybernetics instead of choosing cloned limbs. He wondered what the old man would think of him now. His grandfather had been so proud to hear he was carrying on the family tradition, taking up arms to defend the people, Nate was sure Granddad would give him an awful beating for being kicked out of the Void Corps. He was the first Levin in over one hundred years without a successful Void Corps career. Everyone had pushed him to go back, even serving in a non-combat role was better than nothing, but he'd seen what they did to cyborgs in the Void Corps and there was no way he was spending a whole tour stuck in waste processing.

The shuttle slowed, throwing the passengers forward as the reverse thrusters fired. A heavy clang echoed through the hull as docking clamps wrapped around the hull and secured the ship to the side of the residential station. Nate trudged through the airlock and into the small space station he called home. Caldania was a frontier world, one of the last places an explorer ship could go for supplies and one of the first places they came to for repairs on the way home. The industrial station had been built shortly after the colonies founding and living space on the repair platform had filled up fast. He couldn't quite figure out how it was cheaper to launch an entirely new space station to house the workers instead of adding on to the one they already had but it didn't matter now, the residential station was home for him and everyone else working in orbital repairs and construction. Both stations were old and shared the same cramped layout. Nate walked down the narrow, labyrinthine halls towards his room, trying not to brush up against the exposed pipes and wires along the walls. His room was the last one on the first floor, just above the dock and directly underneath the market level. His quarters weren't exactly comfortable, with a small kitchen, a living room barely big enough to hold his old stained yellow couch, and a tiny bedroom with a single bed, and a beat up old dresser that overflowed with haphazardly folded clothes.

He kicked off his heavy boots and dug through the pile of junk covering the small table by the door. Old takeout containers and beer cans clattered to the metal floor, adding to the growing pile of trash on the floor. Smiling he found what he'd been looking for, shaking stale beer off the tiny clear plastic inhaler, he held it up to the light. Inside were two twisting streams of liquid, one lime green and the other neon yellow, the inhaler was nearly empty but there was enough left for one more hit. Helix wasn't entirely legal but it was everywhere on the station, no matter how awful your day had been one hit always left you feeling pleasantly tired, happy and satisfied, like you'd put in a hard days work doing something you loved and had been wonderfully productive. He sat down on the couch, holding the mouthpiece of the inhaler between his teeth, and clicked the button on the top, vaporizing its contents and breathing down the sweet tasting smoke.

Waiting for the Helix to kick in, he rummaged for the remote and set the large display screen on the wall to an external camera. The screen filled with a stretch of darkness dominated by the system's small orange star. There was something about looking out into space that he always found relaxing, even after his accident. Out there, there were no worries, no job, no clunky robot arm, only emptiness, and the emptiness didn't care who you were or what you'd done, it was just there, taking in everyone brave enough to venture into it.

A bow wave of radiation broke his train of thought, a flash of blue-shifted emissions cracked the void several hundred thousand kilometers away from the station. A ship had arrived. He scowled at the screen, there weren't any ships due to arrive until next week, and as far as he knew there hadn't been any ships passing close enough to drop in for repairs. An unannounced ship was bad news, no one dropped into inhabited systems without warning. Swallowing past a lump in his throat, Nate fished a palm sized tablet computer out of his pocket and dialed a contact number into it. The line went straight to voicemail. He hung up with a frustrated sigh and tossed the tablet onto the couch. Turning off the display screen, he walked over to the small kitchen and pulled an instant meal out of the refrigerator. While he was waiting for the food to finish heating his tablet beeped for attention from where he had left it on the couch. He rushed over to the tablet and answered the message just as it clicked over to voicemail.

"Hey, Nick." he said.

"Nathan!" said Nick happily. "How's my favorite customer? You need another bundle of Helix? Or are you finally getting tired of that weak shit, need something stronger maybe?"

Nick was a creep, he had his fingers in everything illegal that happened on the station. "No," said Nate. "I had my screen set to the external live cam, an unmarked ship just jumped in. I was wondering if I could buy a little time on that hacked comm station of yours, I want to see what's goin' on."

"Jesus Nate, the only one who usually buys time on that rig is the Station Governor's wife. She's trying to catch her husband talking to his girlfriend. It's expensive."

Nate rolled his eyes, Nick loved to gossip. "I don't care about how many girls the Governor is screwing. Will you sell me time on the comm or not?"

"Man, how long have you known me? You know I'll sell anything to you if you've got the cash. Meet me in the VIP room at the bar."

The station's only bar was on the market level. It was a small club packed into an alcove between a barbershop and a restaurant. The door was rimmed with rust and squealed in protest as Nate shouldered it open. The door opened into a short corridor lit by flickering strip of fluorescent lights. A door on the left led into a small security room and straight ahead was the entrance into the club, guarded by a thickly muscled bouncer. .

"Dave!" Nate called with a smile, "What are the odds you let me through without all the hassle this time?"

The bouncer crossed the space between them in two long strides and grabbed Nate by the collar, pushing him up against the wall. "Don't you get smart with me," said Dave. "You know the drill."

"Yeah, sure do." said Nate, frowning. "I was hoping this time you could be nice. Or at least not be a total dick to me."

That remark earned him a cuff across the cheek, and the familiar drag into the small security room. He was given the usual pat down, and then handcuffed to a table while a wizened old back-alley doctor wearing a white lab coat spotted with yellow stains, and a pair of thick glasses, shuffled into the room and wrenched Nate's prosthetic arm out straight. The crusty old sawbones popped open an access panel at Nate's shoulder and jammed a small screwdriver into the override port, disabling the pain receptors in his cybernetics. Nate swore under his breath as the arm went numb, and watched with a sickening feeling as the doctor stipped his arm down to the bones to check for any hidden weapons. The other two men left the room, leaving Nate alone to piece his arm back together. With a weary sigh he laid out the long, rubbery, synthetic muscle cables on the table, double checked that the elbow and wrist actuators were still connected, then he stretched the muscle strands over the frame and clicked them into place. Taking a deep breath, he jammed the screwdriver into the override, stifling a scream as the pain receptors reignited, sending hot waves of pain rolling over the prosthetic.

He stepped out of the security room and into the club, strobe lights and bass heavy music battering into his senses. Shoving through the crowd he made his way to the private rooms at the back. The VIP rooms were small soundproofed chambers filled with soft overstuffed furniture and potted plants. Nick and a pair of thugs were sitting inside waiting for him. Nick was a small man, barely five feet tall with beady eyes and ears that were too large for his head. Nate shut the door, cutting out the noise from the bar and sat down, placing a wad of cash on a small table in the center of the room.

Nick placed a small tablet next to the money. "Comm's all yours, man. Go nuts."

With a few clicks, Nate found the channel he was looking for. A small tinny voice echoed out of the tablet's speaker. "Unknown vessel, please transmit your ID and open a comm channel."

Nick cocked an eyebrow and looked down at the tablet. "Nate ol' buddy," he said with a nervous laugh. "What are we listening to here?"

"The traffic control tower," said Nate.

"Unknown vessel. Transmit your ID signature now or we will launch weapon drones." said the traffic control officer.

Nate pulled his own tablet out of his pocket and opened the station's external camera feed. The unknown vessel stood silent, a barely visible white pinpoint against the blackness of space. A pair of silver spheres flew past the camera trailing long tails of flame. The station had launched the drones.

A new voice came through the tablet, high and full of panic. "Traffic control! This is sensors here, we've lost the ship. It's gone dark."

"Fire at it's last known location!" said the traffic control officer. "And somebody call Third Fleet HQ on Polaris! We're going to need backup."

Nate shut down the tablet. War had come to Caldania.