After a boring class about basic zero G living including showering, sleeping and cleaning as well as a litany of minor but common sense safety regulations, Melbourne was guided back to his hotel room to grab his luggage. He was allowed a final last meal at a fancy hotel restaurant on the company's budget before being escorted to the Seeker.
The Seeker was a standard low-end archaeology ship owned by Arian Horizons that included the basic space archaeology gear including remote XRF and spectrographic analysis tech and a docking drill connected to an airlock for the crew to begin an EVA into ancient spaceships. The ship also came equipped with a smaller landing shuttle that could descend to Luna and other small moons for ground research even though that was outside of the scope of this mission.
The crew capacity was forty personnel for interplanetary missions. The research team was made up of ten people. The security team was made of another ten guards with specialized space combat training. Ten people were assigned to janitorial duties and general grunt work. There were five maintenance technicians. Two people operated the bridge. The pilot served as mission commander as well. The communications officer was a technician specializing in onboard communications systems and also operated on the bridge with the commander. The last three people included an onboard cook and two assistants who maintained operations in the kitchen exclusively. Melbourne was technically in the technician group although he had a special mission assigned by Avian relating to his robotics talent.
Each crew member was given a uniform upon boarding with a patch signifying their role and a name tag on their left chest. The commander was a military veteran by the name of Bryce Sterano. The communications officer was none other than the red haired woman who Melbourne had met atop the airship deck whose name had been revealed to be Kaitlyn Genee. James Kurkoniff was given a cooking internship. Melbourne continuously wracked his brain to understand how that guy was able to secure an internship as prestigious as this.
"Hey, nice to meet you." said a teenage boy with curly brown hair behind Melbourne in line to board the Seeker. "My name is Jeremy Olan. Are you an intern too? You don't look as old as most of the people around here. You seem more my age."
"I am." replied Melbourne, mildly uncomfortable about the social attention. Essentially, his head was on other things. "You are as well, I take it?"
"Yes." said Jeremy. "You're Melbourne Acliate, right? I was on the airship. I saw the fight. I took martial arts too, you know."
"Really?" asked Melbourne skeptically.
"Yeah. Black Belt. You seem to know a mixture of Karate and Taekwondo, am I right?"
"Yes." said Melbourne, shocked. The man didn't appear to be a fighter but just proved more knowledge than he had anticipated.
"I grew up on an asteroid mining colony. My parents moved to Mars, but I got a unique opportunity among children to take ZG Fu, a modern martial arts form geared towards fighting in zero gravity. Since you already know some martial arts, would you be interested in learning some of that form? I can train you over the next month and a half if you'd like."
[New Mission Received: Novice ZG Fighter
*You have been presented with the unique opportunity to learn ZG Fu, a zero gravity combat form, from a stranger for free.
*Learn how to hold your own in a fight in zero gravity environments to increase your chance of long-term survival in space.
*Rewards: Unkown]
"Hey, Melly, how did you get on this flight with your no name parents, huh?" cut in a voice from the line as Melbourne finished reading his quest prompt. Melbourne scowled as he recognized it as James Kurkoniff. "I got an internship because my Dad is a well respected owner of a restaurant chain that is growing across the Isidis region rather rapidly. He made a business arrangement with Arian Horizons to expand his business name. He put in a good word for me and I got this well paid internship. Have you ever seen a place in Lambdanville called The Kurkoniffan Crab?"
Melbourne smirked at James' bragging which only proved that the bully was a worthless rich kid rising on his family's name. He had seen the restaurant but had never really made the association with his bully before today. He chose to lie to avoid feeding James' unearned ego.
"No." said Melbourne calmly. "I didn't get here because I have some wealthy elite family, I got here because Arian Horizons saw some talent in me due to some extracurricular projects I did. I actually got here by my own merit."
James scowled. "I thought for sure this guy would be here as a janitor." thought James in frustration.
***
Despite Melbourne's initial judgment, Kurkoniff's cooking was actually pretty good. He had initially thought to ask the captain for nugae rations due to the fear that James might poison Melbourne's plate specifically. He was eventually convinced that even James wasn't stupid enough to try something like that and smear his father's good name to Arian Horizons, so he tried some of the fresh seafood that was cooked on the initial stages of the voyage.
Strangely, James had been treating Melbourne with much more respect since the fight on the airship deck. He still gave Melbourne dirty glances from time to time, but he didn't dare pick a fight with him now. This made the days of travel a little more peaceful than Melbourne had expected when he first realized James would be attending the voyage.
Melbourne initially tried to get to know Kaitlyn better but quickly became estranged as she seemed to ask probing questions frequently while avoiding personal questions about herself in very clever ways. Melbourne got the feeling that the woman was hiding things after a few days and shifted from actively talking to her to actively avoiding her. After this, he frequently noticed her watching him from time to time though she didn't approach him like a normal person trying to be a friend. Melbourne's intuition caused him to be heavily unsettled by this though he couldn't prove anything. He began to hypothesize that she was either given specific instructions by Arian Horizons to watch him closely or that she was a government agent who had somehow figured out that he was a cyborg. He thought James was bad news earlier, but now he went into frequent mental spirals of despair where he imagined his return to Mars in a few months being marked by his arrest and detainment as soon as he disembarked from the Seeker. His old high school bully was now the least of his worries.
As the blue world of Mars receded in the ship's back cupola into a pale blue dot, Melbourne began to feel small and isolated in a bizarre, disturbing way. The feeling wasn't exactly bad, but it was disorienting. The vastness of space was something hard to fathom, and this really struck you when you ventured from your home planet on interplanetary journeys that always lasted many weeks up to several months depending upon your destination.
Melbourne continued the next month and a half doing routine ship maintenance and commencing his daily ZG workout missions as dictated by his Aclito System. He consistently received +1 XP every day for his routine and gained an additional point in his Str attribute every week for the first two weeks. His increase in muscle mass was noticeable by that point as he took off his shirt to see his once scrawny form transformed as muscles began to bulge slightly from his arms, legs and abs. His cardio also added to his End.
Regular sparring sessions with Jeremy Olan had helped him increase his Agi and Per attributes, increasing his agility and perception. The system also reported the leveling of a miscellaneous skill labeled "ZG Martial Arts" by the system from a lowly 3 points to a more respectable 20 points while his regular "Martial Arts" skill sat at 30 points. ZG Fu took much more getting used to than Sho Gi Gei. The katas and sparring sessions required manipulating the body in ways that felt unnatural at first. Many kicks and punches were similar but Newton's laws of motion were much more involved. He had to be conscious of all structural components in the room and use them as launching pads with the right force and direction to intercept your opponent. He also had to be conscious of the fact that a strike against his opponent would knock both combatants away from each other. The typical flurry of punches you would see in a regular martial arts tournament could never realistically happen in a ZG fight.
One day, Melbourne was floating through the ship with a shirt that showed his bare arms and passed James on his way to handle a transistor replacement that would cause an air circulation problem if not dealt with within 24 hours.
"Damn, Melly!" said James in shock. "What workout routines have you been doing lately? If you keep whatever you're doing up, I might eventually have no choice but to respect you."
A compliment from James? An actual compliment? That was like saying the laws of physics had been altered somehow. Melbourne wondered if Sol was about to turn into a black hole.
Unfortunately, the law of diminishing returns began to take effect after the second week and the same amount of daily training required two weeks before he gained another stat point in his main constitution attributes.
By the time the Seeker arrived in Earth's gravity well on July 7, 2510, Melbourne reviewed his primary stats in the Aclito G.U.I.
[Subject: Melbourne Acliate
*Class: Cyborg
*Level: 1
*XP: 80/100
*HP: 12/12
*ST: 15/15
*BE: 7/7
*Str: 8
*End: 8
*Per: 10
*Int: 15
*Agi: 9
*Cyb: 7]
Int was a new stat that had appeared when his cybersynergy had increased to 6. The Aclito System had explained that intelligence is a far harder vitality attribute to measure when the system first integrates because the human brain is very complex and the system must become more attuned with the body to analyze this. Melbourne understood that he could increase his natural cybersynergy by interacting with his cybernetic augmentations as much as possible, though more frequent interactions drained bioelectric energy which forced his body to go into a recharge mode during which his system would be unusable. It was worth training cybersynergy when he could, however, because higher Cyb meant more BE which resulted in a more efficient metabolism and the ability to use the Aclito and any future augmentations longer.
"Future augmentations." thought Melbourne skeptically as he looked at the image of Luna getting closer in the cupola's view. "I don't think so."
It was his first time seeing Earth's moon. Unlike the planet itself, Luna was populated today by colonists who had begun constructing settlements extending northward from Aitken Basin where the glaciers could be melted into underground channels to supply massive domed crater colonies that usually consisted of moderately sized cities surrounded by vast farmlands. Luna's capital city of Lunaria was visible below as the Seeker flew by on the way to Low Earth Orbit. The habitat of Aitken Basin was the only one yet visible from space, a large patch of greenery with dispersed artificial lakes around a gray dot that was in reality a large city full of towers and colonists from Mars and the Jovian Moons. Other green patches were visible from space in craters extending up near the equatorial regions of Luna at this point, but these habitats were barely visible. Unlike Mars, these environments could not exist under open air on Luna. They represented a network of giant terrariums under giant glass domes made with advanced glass that could resist puncturing by frequent meteor bombardments.
The Seeker made its journey from Luna to Low Earth Orbit after about six hours, decelerating to bring its altitude to about 500 km, the minimum safe distance from the highly radioactive output of the atmosphere below.
Melbourne looked down at the poisonous world with sorrow. He was one of the few souls in his generation who would ever see the home world of humanity this closely. As the continent he knew to be North America moved at a visible pace with their orbital velocity, Melbourne imagined the land populated by millions or even billions of souls once upon a time when it was not unsafe to land. That was before the Artilect War, the great war waged over the creation of cybernetics and artificial intelligence. How different Sol would have been if this world had not been destroyed. Perhaps mankind would be interstellar rather than just interplanetary by now. Maybe his Cybernetic System wouldn't be such an illegal thing and he wouldn't risk execution or imprisonment just for existing with it.
Melbourne's somber thinking was interrupted by a sharp jerk of the ship.
Sirens began to blare loudly before Captain Bryce Sterano's voice boomed over the ship intercom.
"All security personnel, report for duty immediately! I repeat, all hands, report for duty! Our engines have been disabled and we are being boarded by space pirates! I repeat, our engines have been shot and we are being boarded! Prepare for combat!"