Jax dragged a damp cloth in slow, squeaking circles inside a spotless highball glass. Polishing a clean glass was a classic bartender’s trick to simulate momentum, a pantomime of productivity to mask the fact that his own engines were completely dead. The Asteroid Lounge on a Tuesday night was a vacuum of cheap plastic and recycled air, and it was slowly asphyxiating him.
He knew exactly how to fix it. One swallowed apology beamed nineteen light-years back to the Core systems and his parents would wire enough credits to rebuild his ship and buy this bar just to fire the manager. The math of his current situation was getting incredibly grim. Even after three months of monotony, it wasn't quite grim enough to surrender.
Not yet.
The only real, living pulse on the entire station was currently setting up on the corner stage. Jax’s datapad buzzed against the sticky bar top, the notification vibrating through the click and clack of Negative Space plugging in their amps.
STATION 0-K DRY DOCK SERVICES
RATE ADJUSTMENT NOTICE
Promotional rate expires: 0000, 3234-07-19
New monthly rate: 5,000 credits
His stomach dropped at the reminder. A week. Just 7 more days until the fees for storing his busted ship doubled, and he went from keeping just ahead to falling far behind. Suffocating.
He silenced the datapad and shoved it back into his pocket, forcing his attention to the bar. Everything was clean and tidy, as it should be at the start of a slow shift. The liquor dispensers gleamed. The glasses were racked. The counters were wiped down to shine.
It all made him want to scream.
No one wanted to work Tuesday nights. They were never good for tips, but Jax needed any credits he could get. The person on the schedule was happy to give the shift to him. Besides, he loved this band.
With so few people, the Asteroid Lounge felt too open. Too airy for a band night. That's Tuesday for you, though.
On a weekend, the Lounge was stuffed with hundreds of off-work station residents blowing off steam and loose credits. Tonight, Jax could count the patrons on two hands. Most of them weren't even watching the stage. Now, he could see straight through to the passageway wall where the faded station designation, 0-K, mocked him. Most locals just called the whole orbital "Okay," though Jax had never found anything particularly 'okay' about it.
"WE ARE NEGATIVE SPACE! And we're here to create velocity!" The lead singer's voice screamed from the corner stage. The thump of a bass reverberated off the plastic-coated walls of the bar.
Jax closed his eyes, trying to lose himself in the rhythm. The bass line walked and strutted, refusing to settle into anything predictable.
Bah da bump, dat. Dah do do dum, dat. Bah daaaa da bump, dat.
After a moment, it found its groove when the lead guitar added a sultry set of high notes. A synthesizer would sound great in there to fatten it up, Jax thought. They had potential. Real potential. The kind that shouldn't be wasted on empty Tuesday crowds who treated live music like background noise.
"Youuuuuuuu been in my orbit for so loooong, that I forget that, my kitty cat, kill sat, you don't belong…" the singer began.
Three men at a table near the back were laughing over something on a datapad, completely ignoring the stage. A couple in the corner booth was having what looked like a breakup conversation. Only two people, a woman in a maintenance jumpsuit and an older guy in a worn flight jacket, were actually watching the band.
He couldn't understand how the band put up with this station for their entire lives. He'd only been there a few months, and this was already killing him.
Not the work itself, but what it represented. Three months of this. Three months of wiping down the same bar, serving the same drinks to the same orbital-bound people who'd given up on the idea that life could be anything more than a paycheck and a hab unit. Three months of watching his savings creep upward at a pace that would never, ever beat the clock.
He'd grown up on ships. Crawling through cargo holds before he could read. Learning to plot jumps before he hit puberty. His parents ran a fleet of couriers and freighters that touched every major station in well-established space. The cockpit of a ship was where he belonged, stars streaming past, jump coordinates scrolling across navigation screens, the freedom to go anywhere.
Not here. Not stuck. Not serving beer to people who'd forgotten what it meant to move.
"Oy! Barkeep! 4 Beers sometime this shift, please?"
Jax shook his head to break the trance. "Coming right up."
Music faded into the background as Jax focused on the work. Even with the tiny crowd, he was dealing out Blue Nebulas, Super-Old Fashioneds, beers, and club sodas for the next couple of hours in between bouts of cleaning, wiping, and restocking. Each hour was a handful of credits. Each shift had been a few steps closer to freedom. But the math didn't work after next week. The sad reality was that it never worked. It wasn't just the spin of the station holding him down.
He pulled out his datapad during a lull and ran the numbers again. Same answer as always. Even with double shifts, even with zero spending on anything but rent and protein packs, he'd be three weeks short of affording the drive parts when the fees doubled. And that was just one set of components. The hull plating would take another month. The power couplings, another several weeks after that.
By then, he'd owe more in dock fees than the Dust Devil was worth.
The music ended. Polite applause from the half-dozen people who'd bothered to pay attention. The band started breaking down their gear, and the meager crowd filtered out into the station corridors without a backward glance.
Jax wiped down the bar with more force than necessary. This place was a trap. A slow-motion prison where dreams went to suffocate under the weight of "reasonable," "practical," and "steady income."
"Hi Jax. 2 beers, please."
Looking up, Jax recognized the bass player from the band. Onda. Pink hair, sharp eyes, fingers that never seemed to stop moving, even after 2 hours of playing. "Just 2 tonight?" he asked, managing something like a smile.
"Just me and Kenzie. Everyone else has work tomorrow," she replied, taking her beer.
"I'm surprised to see you here so often, Jax," McKenzie, the band's drummer, remarked as she accepted the second beer and sat at the bar. "New guy like you has an expiration date before you're just another orbity like us."
The word hit harder than she probably intended. Orbity. Someone whose entire existence was contained within a single station's orbit. Someone who'd stopped moving.
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Jax smiled, but it felt brittle. "Yeah, that was fun for the first week. I think my novelty wore off. Either that or my constant begging off for work scared the ladies away." He shrugged, trying to make it sound casual. "I'm not staying, though. Between the extra shifts and not spending money on niceties like dinners out, I'm close to getting the parts to fix my ship."
"Ah, the mysterious 'ship.' I don't think it exists. How about you, Onda?"
"McKenzie, be nice to the new guy. Jax, you've been holed up here for months. How busted up is this ship?" Onda asked gently.
"Pretty busted." The glass in his hand was already spotless, but he kept polishing. "I'm a solid pilot and a decent electrician. I can weld a bit. But the Dust Devil is down with engine, powerplant, and hull issues. Issues I hear you're the right person to address, McKenzie."
McKenzie paused, leaning back on her sticky vinyl stool. A spark of professional pride cut through her station fatigue. She took a slow, deliberate sip of her beer, swallowing before she answered.
"You heard right," McKenzie said, resting her forearms on the bar. "I can fix anything that burns fuel. But my hourly rate at the yard is steep, and I don't turn wrenches on my own time for free. Why are you pitching me, Jax?"
He set the glass down harder than intended. "If I don't get it fixed soon, the dry dock fees will jump higher than my apartment rental. I've got some saved, but that's for parts. I can't let this," he gestured around the empty bar, "become my real life."
Onda dropped onto a sticky vinyl stool at the corner of the bar, pulling her beer toward her. Her bubblegum-pink hair clashed brilliantly with the beige drabness of the station-issue furniture. "I hate that feeling," she sighed. "The 'Normie Dread.'"
"Normie Dread?" McKenzie raised an eyebrow.
"You know, that existential fear that you're going to wake up tomorrow and accept that your entire life will be spent within the same 10-kilometer orbital, eeking out a living as another 'normie' on a mid-sized station orbiting an okay planet." Onda swirled her beer, staring into it like it held answers. "McKenzie, if we're still here in a year, we failed. The band has the potential, we just don't have the velocity."
Jax's hand stilled on the bar. Velocity. The word resonated in his chest like a sustained note. That's what was missing. That's what this place stripped away from everyone who stayed too long. Forward motion. Momentum. The thrust to escape gravity and find something bigger.
He looked at Onda, really looked at her. The way her fingers drummed against the bar in the same rhythm she'd been playing on stage. At McKenzie, whose eyes held the same desperate edge he saw in his own mirror every morning. At the empty stage behind them, where fifteen people had bothered to listen to something genuinely good.
The datapad in his pocket felt heavy. One week. 7 days until everything he'd worked for slipped out of reach.
You're an explorer, his grandmother had always said. A trailblazer. You need the stars like other people need air.
She'd been right. And if he was going down, he was going down swinging.
Jax continued meticulously wiping down the liquor dispenser, trying to look detached, but his heart was hammering. The words were forming before he could stop them. The plan, desperate, half-formed, obviously stupid, crystallized in his mind.
Onda looked up from her beer. She subtly shifted her weight away from the bar and crossed her arms. He recognized it as the universal signal for "shields up."
Jax's stomach tightened. He'd seen that look a dozen times before, usually right before she shredded some tourist for making a pass. She was bracing for a pickup line. She expected him to be just another guy making a play for the pink hair.
He didn't lean in. He didn't smile. He simply slid a clean coaster in front of her with a sharp clack, then placed one in front of McKenzie, too.
Onda's eyes flicked to the coaster, surprised by the lack of a pitch.
"Look," Jax said, his voice quiet and tight. "We both have a velocity problem here, right?"
Onda gave him a cool, expecting-the-pitch look. "Go on."
Jax leaned his forearms on the bar. His usual outward confidence was missing, replaced by palpable desperation. He was starkly reminded that he was the outsider here; they were locals. Their suspicion was an airlock he needed to cycle.
“My ship, it’s real,” Jax asserted, the words barely audible. “A fast, courier vessel. It's built for long hauls. I took it from my family eight months ago. We run a fleet of couriers and freighters. I left with it after an argument about my future, and the Dust Devil has been grounded here ever since. Like I said, it needs a new jump drive capacitor and some hull work. It’s been sitting in Dry Dock 7 for the past 3 months.”
Onda blinked. She looked completely thrown by the lack of flirtation. "You stole a ship?"
Jax winced. "No. I mean, maybe. It's fifty-fifty if my parents have reported it as stolen or if they're just waiting for me to cool my heels and come crawling back. But either way, they're not paying the repair bills. It's mine in all but title, but right now it's a credit-sink." He pulled out his datapad and showed them the notification. "In 7 days, the dock fees double. I'm already barely keeping pace."
He fixed his gaze on Onda and McKenzie. "It's also got a fully legit courier license. I know enough from growing up in the business to get it back on the grid. I'm proposing a barter."
"And what do we get in this barter?" McKenzie asked, her suspicion hardening into professional skepticism.
"I want off this orbital. I want to never feel normie dread again," Jax said, and he couldn't keep the raw need out of his voice. "I want to wake up in a different system every month. I want to chase coordinates and carry cargo to places I've never been. I want to move."
He looked at the empty stage, then back at them. "And you? The band? You need what that crowd tonight didn't give you. You need people who actually listen. You need venues that matter. You need to be heard before this place grinds you down into just another cover band playing to five people on a Tuesday."
Onda's expression shifted slightly. Not agreement, but recognition.
"The setup is simple," Jax continued, speaking faster now. "Your gigs pay for fuel and basic supplies. The courier credits pay for parts and the repair crew. We fly where the gigs are and make deliveries along the way. You get new markets, new audiences. I get my ship flying and a reason to be in the black where I belong."
"You're asking us to become part-time space truckers to spread our music," Onda stated, her tone flat.
"To support your careers," Jax insisted, forcing a smile. "It's about blending the work. I can handle the courier bookings. I know the channels, the clients, the rates. I haven't landed a delivery yet, but there are always runs to the big stations. A single decent payout would cover the capacitor, which is the biggest repair cost. 0-K doesn't have the parts I need, and I don't have the skills to do the work anyway. I'm somewhere between a suit and a cockpit jockey."
McKenzie shook her head. "Jax, no offense. You seem like an okay guy, but throwing in with you on some random ship we've never seen is a hell of a risk."
"I know." Jax's hand shook slightly as he reached into his pocket. Decision made. He'd been turning this over in his mind for weeks, and tonight? Tonight was the deadline his gut had been screaming about.
He pushed a small encrypted data chip across the bar. "This is entirely stupid. I'm betting all my savings on this idea.
"I secured a jumper rental for 72 hours,” he began. “That’s enough time to make it to Perro Station. There are parts dealers there that have what the Devil needs. We have enough time to get there, shop, do a gig, and get back. Call it a trial run."
Onda's eyes widened slightly.
“This chip has the rental agreement and ship authorization on it. Take it, so you see I’m serious. If you’re in, meet me with the rest of the band in Dry Dock 7 the day after tomorrow at 1900. You can see the Devil for yourself.”
Onda picked up the chip, turning it over in her fingers. Its plastic case reflected the bar lights as she rotated it.
"You're right, Jax. This is entirely stupid," she said slowly, meeting his eyes. "You're betting everything on us. Why?"
"Because I'm out of options," Jax admitted.
"And because I heard you play tonight. Actually listened. Just like the last 6 times you played the Lounge. You're too good for this place. That bass line in the second song, the one that wouldn't settle, that's the sound of someone who doesn't want to be contained." He looked between them. "I get it. I've been trying to contain myself behind this bar for three months, and it's suffocating me. Maybe we're all meant for something bigger."
Onda held his gaze for a long moment, then pocketed the chip. "I'll bring it to practice tomorrow. No promises."
"Fair enough," Jax said, though his heart was still racing.
As Onda and McKenzie slid off their stools and headed for the exit, Jax heard McKenzie's quiet question: "We're not actually considering this, right?"
"We're considering it," Onda replied, her voice carrying back across the empty bar. "Which scares me more than saying no."
Jax watched them disappear into the corridor, then looked down at his datapad again. The notification still glowed on the screen.
One week until the fees double.
Either way, in seven days, everything would change.