1
Hazardous Materials
Zola
Threeinspectors.Threeemergencyevacuations. All citing “hostile biological contamination” and “imminent threat assessment.”
I stare at the files spread across The Precision’s nav console as my ship settles onto the asteroid platform with a shudder that rattles my teeth. Madge “Mother” Morrison’s message had been crystal clear: “Cross, you’re our last shot at getting near this walking disaster. Last three inspectors all filed emergency evacuation reports—keep your scanners running and your distance.”
Mother Morrison runs Junction One’s dispatch center with the kind of firmness that comes from years of keeping couriers alive in the most dangerous sectors of known space. When she personally recommends someone for an assignment, it means two things: the situation is worse than the official reports suggest, and she trusts you not to make it worse.
I can’t afford to prove her wrong.
Emergency evacuations. From a courier inspection. Inspector Blackwell lasted four hours before filing a report claiming “exposure to unknown toxic compounds with psychoactive properties.” Inspector Ng made it six hours but cited “imminent biological threat requiring immediate medical intervention.” Inspector Gluxor—veteran of fifteen years, survivor of the Kepler mining disaster—lasted exactly two hours and seventeen minutes before declaring Crash Maxone “an uncontained biological hazard requiring quarantine protocols.”
All three had stellar records. All three requested immediate transfers to desk duty after their encounters with one courier who, according to his file, had never had any incident with another employee before.
OOPS—Orion Outpost Postal Service—handles the deliveries nobody else will touch. War zones, quarantined systems, pirate territories. When Trans-System Logistics won’t risk theircorporate insurance rates, OOPS couriers step up. It’s dangerous work, which is exactly why safety inspections matter.
One dead courier is a tragedy. A pattern of “accidents” around a single individual suggests something far more concerning—either criminal negligence or something my equipment isn’t designed to detect.
Either way, it’s my job to find out which.
Either Crash Maxone is the most dangerous man in OOPS employment, or something very strange is happening on these routine safety checks.
The truth is, I need this inspection to succeed. My last assignment—documenting safety violations at the mining operation in the Kepler system following a disaster—resulted in a facility shutdown, three hundred job losses, and a formal complaint filed against me with OOPS administration. Never mind that the facility’s atmospheric processors were leaking toxic compounds into the workers’ living quarters. Never mind that two miners had already been hospitalized with respiratory failure.
I followed protocol. I documented everything. I probably saved lives.
And I was “counseled” about the economic impact of my decisions and the importance of “working with our clients to find mutually beneficial solutions.”
Another inspection like that, and I’ll be reassigned to desk duty. Or worse—transferred to one of the Core world posts where safety inspections are performed by committee and violations get buried under mountains of paperwork and political considerations.
Crash Maxone’s file makes for disturbing reading. In eighteen months with OOPS—where courier turnover is measured in weeks, not years—he’s survived explosive decompression, contact with Class-5 corrosives, a plasma fire, and what appearsto be direct exposure to vacuum. His employment record shows seventeen different Occupational Health and Safety violations and at least three instances of physics giving up completely and going home for the day.
The medical reports are even stranger. Most couriers with that record are either dead, missing limbs, or sporting enough scar tissue to qualify for hazard pay. Maxone’s quarterly health assessments show perfect vitals across the board. Not just healthy—perfect. Heart rate, blood pressure, cellular regeneration markers, even his cholesterol levels read like they’ve been engineered in a lab.
But it’s the inspector reports that really puzzle me. Blackwell’s notes start normally enough—routine safety violations, unauthorized lifting procedures, failure to post hazardous substance warnings. Then, four hours in, his handwriting becomes increasingly erratic. His final entry reads: “Subject producing unknown biological compounds. Equipment readings inconsistent. Feeling nauseous and disoriented. Recommend immediate evacuation pending hazmat analysis.”
Ng’s report is even shorter: “Biological contamination detected within first hour. Subject’s presence triggers severe physiological distress. Unable to complete assessment. Emergency evacuation required.”
Gluxor, the most experienced of the three, managed only: “Get me off this fucking platform. NOW.”
Three veteran inspectors, three complete professional breakdowns. All involving the same golden-skinned courier who, according to Mother, “brings in his packages on time, never complains about hazard pay, and keeps his ship spotless.”
The platform outside looks like every other budget operation in the Fringe—magnetic clamps holding cargo containers in rough rows, emergency oxygen stations with indicator lightscycling through decidedly non-regulation colors, and the kind of creative maintenance that keeps safety inspectors employed.
My boots hit the platform with the irregular tug of cheap grav-plating, and immediately I hear the crash of metal against stone. Creative cursing follows—not in Standard, but something that sounds like growling set to music.
I pause outside my ship, waiting for the surge of fear or nausea that apparently drove my colleagues to file evacuation reports. Nothing. Just professional curiosity about why someone’s swearing in what sounds like a dead language, and the familiar weight of my equipment belt—three different scanners, emergency beacon, stun baton, and enough documentation tools to catalog a small war.
Around the corner, I find him—and understand exactly why my predecessors ran.
Sweet saints and burning stars.
Crash Maxone is casually hefting a cargo container marked “CAUTION: REQUIRES MECHANICAL LIFTING ASSISTANCE - MINIMUM TWO-PERSON CREW” like it weighs nothing. His dark hair falls across a face that belongs in vid-screen fantasies, and his coveralls—OOPS standard-issue, I note professionally—stretch across shoulders that could benchpress The Precision.
But that’s not the problem.
