One Man's Trash

By Ryan Southwick

Croft Winder grew up believing that love is blind.

It wasn't until he took his fiancée on a little vacation to the Truck Stop at the Center of the Galaxy, however, that he learned it can also be downright insane.

Will the wonders of the Truck Stop save their relationship or send it to the executioner’s block? Not even the ancient Delphians could have guessed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Water Dragon Publishing
• Release date: Oct 25, 2022
• ISBN: 9781957146720

Ryan Southwick

Ryan Southwick decided to dabble at writing late in life, and quickly became obsessed with the craft. He grew up in Pennsylvania and moved to a farming town on California’s central coast during elementary school, but it was in junior high school where he had his first taste of storytelling with a small role playing group and couldn’t get enough.In addition to half a lifetime in the software development industry, making everything from 3-D games to mission-critical business applications to help cure cancer, he was also a Radiation Therapist for many years. His technical experience, medical skills, and lifelong fascination for science fiction became the ingredients for his book series, The Z-Tech Chronicles, which combines elements of each into a fantastic contemporary tale of super-science, fantasy, and adventure, based in his Bay Area stomping grounds. Ryan’s related short story “Once Upon a Nightwalker” was published in the Corporate Catharsis anthology, available from Paper Angel Press.Ryan currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and two children. You can get in touch with him and see more of his work by visiting his website RyanSouthwickAuthor.com or his Facebook page.

Book preview

Truck Stop at the Center of the Galaxy

One Man’s Trash

Ryan Southwick

Copyright © 2022 by Ryan Southwick

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, except for the purpose of review and/or reference, without explicit permission in writing from the publisher.

Cover design copyright © 2022 by Niki Lenhart

nikilen-designs.com

Published by Water Dragon Publishing

waterdragonpublishing.com

An imprint of Paper Angel Press

paperangelpress.com

978-1-957146-72-0 (EPUB)

FIRST EDITION

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

To Arfer

The loveliest Cockney to ever grace our lives

Acknowledgments

To all the authors who breathed life into the Truck Stop, I hope the legacy long continues.

To Steve, for creating tomes of technical documents that made the Truck Stop station a believable place.

To Niki, for hitting a cover home run on the first try. Keep them coming!

To Dick and Karen, my childhood playmates, mentors, and Cockney correctors.

To Louise, for the amazing beta feedback that you turned around on a moment’s notice. You’re my reading hero!

And to Arfer, born within the sound of Bow bells, who taught me true Cockney rhyming slang at a young age, along with a host of other life skills that made me the person I am today. You will always be missed.

1

Croft

Crofton winder floated out from the stasis room, rubbed the drug-induced sleep from his eyes, and gazed blearily out the cockpit. He blinked, then rubbed his eyes again to make sure he wasn’t still dreaming.

The Truck Stop at the Center of the Galaxy loomed larger than any non-celestial object Croft had ever seen. With the massive accretion disk of the galaxy’s core behind it, shimmering every color imaginable, the alien-built space station looked truly majestic. The vastness of space around them glowed with tightly packed stars, swirling, dancing in all dimensions.

Here, the galaxy felt truly alive.

A minute later, Maria emerged from the stasis room. Although she had just awakened, her eyes were already glued to her infernal data pad, which never seemed to leave her hands these days. She scratched her bobbed, dark brown hair, which stuck out in all directions like a giant fuzz ball. She shoved a fist in her mouth to stifle a yawn, as if the most stunning display in the galaxy paled next to whatever business-related page had caught her attention.

Rallying himself, Croft wrapped an arm around her shoulders and smiled.

What did I tell you? Not bad for a summer getaway, eh?

Maria reluctantly pried her gaze from her data pad and looked out the cockpit window. Her breath caught.

Croft squeezed her shoulders, the little rabbit in his chest hopping around in glee.

Finally. Finally he had found something to engage her other than her business. It had taken a twenty-six-thousand light-year skipstream trip to the center of the galaxy to do it, but the expense — which, on Croft’s meager mechanic’s income, he would be paying down for years to come — had been worth it.

Maria’s attention soon returned to her data pad, dragging Croft’s heart down with it. She sat in one of the two forward-facing seats, set her pad on the console and, Croft suspected, forgot all about the marvelous wonder outside their window.

A red light flashed on the control panel. Someone was hailing them on an emergency channel.

Not good.

Croft sat in the pilot’s chair and opened the communication channel. "This is Crofton Winder of the SS Majestic. What —"

A loud beep cut him off. A message had arrived with high importance, embedded with an autopilot program. The subject read:

Collision imminent! Run the attached program immediately.

Collision?

He glanced through the cockpit window. The space station ahead appeared larger than before.

Much larger.

Croft quickly pulled up the autopilot status.

Autopilot offline. Error code: 80043.1

Crap!

One glance at the rapidly looming space station told him they had no time to reboot it. They had exited the skipstream off-target and at a higher-than-projected velocity — punctuated by a belated collision alarm.

Their ship was hurtling straight for the station’s Main Ring.

The chances of the autopilot failing were staggeringly low. The chances of also exiting the skipstream on a collision course with another celestial object were so ridiculously small that Croft had a better chance of winning the lottery three times in a row.

In this case, he felt anything but lucky.

Maria’s stared at the oncoming catastrophe with wide-eyed shock. Her mouth opened, then snapped shut when Croft pounded the Load button with his fist. Whatever nav program the message contained wouldn’t be as good as a full autopilot, but it would be better than the non-existent pilot they had now.

A loading screen flashed on the display, followed immediately by a Run prompt.

Maria mashed the screen with her thumb.

The ship pitched ninety degrees downward, leaving Croft’s stomach a few kilometers behind. Thrusters roared to maximum, plastering both of them against the back of their seats.

The thrusters cut almost as quickly as they’d started. The ship pitched upward again, putting the space station back in view.

They were still hurtling toward it at mind-boggling speed — so fast that Croft couldn’t tell whether they would crater into the lower dock ring, or into one of the four long arms connecting the outer ring to the station’s cylindrical center.

Alarms blared.

Collision imminent! Collision imminent!

The message flashed repeatedly — and unhelpfully — across the screen.

Maria’s data pad clattered to the floor. She dug her fingers into his arm, eyes wide with terror.

CrooooooOOOOOFFFTTT!!!

He tensed, pressing himself against the seat, as if that would improve his chances in the slightest of surviving a three-hundred-thousand-kilometer-per-hour collision with the massive space station.

Majestic streaked forward. The station’s outer ring grew impossibly large in the blink of an eye.

The ship rocked, as if hit from the top and bottom simultaneously.

And then the station disappeared, leaving only an amazing view of the galaxy’s super-massive black hole.

Croft pinched himself to make sure he hadn’t died. It hurt almost as much as Maria’s fingers, which dug painful divots into his arm.

The collision warning disappeared from the console, replaced with a lateral image of their ship. The top and bottom flashed yellow, citing eighty-one and eighty-eight percent structural integrity, respectively.

Otherwise, Majestic appeared to be fine.

Croft turned to Maria. A gigantic smile stretched his cheeks. Maria slowly faced him, trembling. A smile slowly spread across her face, too, reminding him of the day they’d first met, over a year ago. These days, her smiles were too few and far between. Seeing it only reminded him how much he missed the old Maria. That it had taken a near-death experience to make her bloom saddened him, but it also gave him hope.

This wondrous space station, built by the long-extinct Delphians, would make her smile again. It had to.

Another incoming request interrupted his reminiscence — this time, not on the emergency channel. A glance showed the same ship ID as the emergency hail.

Is everyone all right? a female voice said the moment he opened the comm.

Yes, thanks to you, Croft said.

Thank goodness! I wasn’t sure if the nav instructions I sent would be compatible with your systems, so I made a best guess. Her light and airy voice reminded Croft of a warm breeze on a pleasant summer day.

Not compatible?

All Earth ships used the same navigation software, or near enough, which meant the person on the other end of the call wasn’t human.

And I’ll bet she’s a station traffic control operator.

You’ll have to let me buy you a drink when we finally dock, Croft said before his brain could filter the suicidal response.

A stern glance from Maria confirmed he’d flown into a galactic minefield.

U-us, I meant. Croft tugged his collar, which had suddenly grown hot. "Let us buy you a drink. Me and Maria. We’re a couple."

Oh, the voice said, so sadly and softly that Croft wanted to reach through the console and give her a comforting pat on the shoulder. That’s nice. The drink will have to wait, unfortunately. I’m here on bus —

Static momentarily buzzed the console.

Sorry, the voice said, even softer than before. I have to go. Glad you’re safe, and hope you have a wonderful stay.

Wait! What’s your —

The comm link died.

— name.

Croft sat back in his chair. The tone of her voice — Croft could only think of it as a she — had changed after the static interruption.

Was she afraid?

Terrific, Maria said, gripping her hair. She probably reported us to the local authorities.

Why would she do that?

For damaging the station!

Maria tapped the console. A view from the outside cameras appeared. She rewound a few minutes back, then set the playback speed to one-one thousandth of normal. Even at that slow speed, they approached the station frighteningly fast, but it soon became clear why they hadn’t vaporized against its titanium exterior. The bottom of Majestic had scraped the very top of the station’s Main Ring. Nanoseconds later, the top of their ship had scraped the bottom of one of the four large spokes connecting the Main Ring to the center of the station.

Croft’s jaw dropped.

Their ship had essentially threaded a needle. A centimeter higher or lower and the impact vibrations alone would have torn them apart. Croft doubted even their autopilot, had it been functioning, could have pulled off such a precise maneuver. Whoever their savior was, she had performed a certified miracle.

This is terrible, Maria said in a hollow voice.

That we survived?

"That we’re ruined! I’m ruined! She stood and started pacing, waving her hands. Do you have any idea how much it costs to fix a space station? One built by extinct aliens, at that!"

Maria —

Don’t ‘Maria’ me! This is my ship. I’m responsible! She looked around wildly. Her eyes darted like a trapped animal. They’ll confiscate it. Sue me for reckless flying and endangerment of the station’s inhabitants. They … they might arrest me! Maria grabbed his shoulders and shook until his teeth rattled. I can’t go to jail, Croft! No one will ever do business with me again! I can’t!

You won’t.

She sucked a panicked breath to protest, but Croft pulled her into his lap and held her close. Her body sank against his, stiff and trembling.

I’ll fix this, he whispered into her hair. You’ll see.

Maria’s voice turned deadly soft. Was this your fault?

Me?

Were you tinkering again? Is that why the autopilot failed?

Croft tried to stammer a response, but he couldn’t even form the words.

The fault wasn’t his. He would stake his life on it. Croft had run a cursory diagnostic before they’d departed Earth, nothing more.

Maybe, he said anyway. If shifting the blame to him would calm her down, then he would gladly take the heat. He hated seeing her so upset. So vulnerable. And when the authorities ask, I’ll tell them as much.

Her shaking subsided. Maria rubbed her nose, sniffled, and rotated in the zero gravity until Croft could only see her back.

Good.

Without another word, she kicked off and floated back to the stasis room, which doubled as a bedroom, then locked the door.

Croft pointed the ship back toward the station and began the long process of reversing their velocity so they could return to the Truck Stop, where he hopefully wouldn’t be arrested on sight.

2

Baggage

A barrage of scents greeted Croft when he and Maria ascended the docking ramp: some pungent, some sweet, some acrid, and some so alien that his nose couldn’t quite categorize them. A rounded ceiling loomed thirty meters overhead, more spacious than any space station Croft had ever visited.

And this is just the Docking Ring. The Main Ring is even larger.

Unfortunately, three figures in blue security outfits awaited them at the top of the ladder, each carrying holstered sidearms. Handcuffs dangled from their belts.

Maria stopped in her tracks, rigid. It was exactly as she’d feared.

Croft, she said so softly that only he could hear. I … I can’t …

He patted her arm to help ease her panic, even though his own heart hammered in his chest like a three-liter piston. Croft had no desire to go to jail, either. But, between the two of them, it wasn’t even a choice.

Besides, being in jail is far better than being dead. I’ll take what I can get.

Gathering his courage, he motioned for Maria to stay put, then approached the security team.

Good afternoon, Croft said as affably as he could manage, given the crushing tension in his chest. Or evening. What time is it here, anyway? Stasis always throws my internal clock for a loop.

Surprisingly, the officers paid him little mind, their attention focused somewhere down the docking ring.

One with a blonde mustache gave him an annoyed look and pulled out his data pad. Afternoon, if you’re on Earth time. He looked away.

Right, thanks for that Officer …?

Robins.

Officer Robins. Yes. Croft rubbed his hands. Well, I can see you’re busy, so we’ll just, um, head into the station, then, I suppose.

The security team gave no indication that they’d heard or cared. But they hadn’t objected, nor had they slapped him in irons, so he considered it a win.

Croft turned and held out his arm. Shall we?

Maria squeaked something and hurried up the ramp. Croft was delighted when she accepted