Dwarves in Space

by S E Zbasnik

  "You should not have done that," she said. Her hair was piled high in the auto-dye curlers as she reset it back to her cocktail of blacks and oranges. Brena twisted her piled upon head in a negative fashion, in danger of banging it into one of the emergency exit signs.

  "I did nothing of reproach," Taliesin responded neutrally. He'd never figured out how to lie to his kin, so he worked around it.

  Twins the others called them. Not strictly accurate, as they were a good quarter of a century apart by birth, but they shared much the same in facial structure; the swooping mix of oranges and blacks that marked their family line, a small nose jutting far out to match the pronounced overbite of most elves, and of course a pair of excessive pointed ears.

  Brena folded her extended arms into the folds of her multi-hued dressing gown. It looked like someone ripped a tent off one of those traveling infomercials and draped it around her body. She claimed it was "historically accurate." He assumed she was referring to some ancient, space faring race of clowns.

  "I am to believe that after you descend from private quarters?"

  "Oh, by the five seeds Cheese, it was a business matter, nothing more." He lapsed into her most hated nickname born from a bit of a misunderstanding when a pair of dwarven merchants offered up a fine selection of cheeses from the Crest region and mistakenly referred to brie as bray. The nickname was instantaneous, but in later years would lead to swift sanctions from his father by association.

  Brena frowned at the name, but kept pressing, her cold mask cracking, "'A business matter.' Is that the preferred euphemism this era?!"

  But Taliesin ignored his sister's needling of his personal or professional time, "Cheese?" his voice dropped low as if he were inquiring about planetary secrets, "Have you misplaced the time again?"

  She waved him away, her hand full of tuning rings getting awfully close to his concerned face. "No, of course not...I simply have been testing the limits." And her head fell down to her chest, unable to look him in the eye.

  "I despise it. Every moment, every touch of..." her head rose to meet his, and her lip wobbled as a keen tumbled deep in her throat, "You don't know, you cannot know. When I'm on them, it's as if I'm inside a fish bowl, and beyond me I can see the world, the beautiful colors of emotion. Pinks of joy, blues of sorrow, yellows of regret, greens of empathy, even the blacks of hate. I watch and I swim, memorizing every notch on a person's face, but through the thick layers of glass and warping water I feel," she pounded her fist into her chest, far too hard, "nothing."

  He wished he had a word to give her, a phrase to make it all better. To somehow assure her that her fate was a preferable one at times, but she'd either scoff and accuse him of admiring the neighbor's branch, or -- if it had been long enough since the last dose -- something much worse. Instead, he fell back on the old transcript he spoke every time she went off medication, "Brena, stopping will..."

  "I know," she raged, then blinked back her anger. She didn't have long before the glut of walled off emotions shifted to something more dangerous. Taking a slow breath, she dug through the thick pockets of her nightgown and extracted a hypo. "I know," her voice was calm as she undid the cap and jammed the needle deep into her neck. She didn't flinch at the bite, but Taliesin did.

  Her fingers shook as she replaced the cap, planning to add it to her pile of used to discard on the next planet they visited. It would take a few minutes before the dead mask would slip across her brain like a lead blanket. She painted on her false smile, always false as long as she suffered this rot, and lightly patted her brother on the shoulder.

  "Do not think this excuses your actions," she said even as her mind slipped back, "I am aware of the way you view her, you are experimenting with gravity."

  Her younger brother's one orange cheek turned a reddish hue as he kicked his foot about, "It is...it does not matter regardless. She has...she despises me for my vocation. That much is clear."

  Exhaustion began to claim Brena, as most of her energy was spent suffering through a near emotional collapse. She nodded her head and acquiesced to her brother's clearly short-sided tunnel vision of women. He seemed to misbelieve that humans couldn't hold more than one thought in their heads, but she'd spent so much of her life watching others emotions to try and hide amongst them, she learned how to discern the deepest of feelings no matter how unaware the other was.

  This could be a big problem if left unchecked.

  "Come," Brena said, nodding towards the galley, "I believe there is still some soup left."

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Orn tugged at the edge of his glove as a foreign number, slightly faded from passing through the fabric, rotated above his palm. He made it a rule to never trust anything that required more than one dash inside it. The others seemed less perturbed as his wife passed out the exact catalog code of whatever part was busted, or about to bust, or thinking of busting.

  "You want to get the 'a,'" Ferra marched around Variel and Orn as if inspecting her troops. "I will stress it now so I do not have to stress it on your kidneys later. Get the 'a' model."

  Variel tapped her own PALM off, never leaving the thing on for more than a few minutes, while Orn rotated the number some more and then saluted his wife. "Honey, yes, Sweetheart!"

  Ferra shook her head, not a single thread of her bound hair slipping free from its nuclear grade bun, as her husband grinned like a child savoring its first taste of spring apthalm nectar. She wasn't certain who gave up first in trying to discipline Orn, herself or the Captain. Her odd century or five trained her that past the age of being able to rent a terrain shuttle, there was no changing a person, but occasionally she clung to a foreign dream that Orn might shape up to being something a bit more employable.

  But Variel accepted from the first moment his buckled boots hit the deck of the still defrosting Elation-Cru that she couldn't get him to shut that ever flapping trap and get within the same light year as professionalism. Some wives would probably be concerned that another woman understood their husband so well, Ferra considered it insurance. No one who knew Orn would ever want him.

  "And if there remain no more of these parts?" the male dulcen's voice broke Ferra from her thoughts. She'd shot a questioning look at the Captain at the extra elf incursion, but Variel only shrugged. If they wanted to get their feet wet on Vargal it was their choice. Ferra hated having them near, but it could be interesting to watch the high ones flounder down among the dregs.

  "They'll have one," Variel answered, earning the slow turn of the bard in the group, her face painted even more outlandish than usual. Oh Vargal would eat her alive from the inside out. "And if not," the captain continued, "we come up with a new plan."

  "The new plan would be waiting until someone either crafts us one, we thieve one off another passing ancient cruise ship, or someone destroys the laws of physics that govern this universe," Ferra grumbled, not happy with the addition of new variables in her equation.

  "I didn't get the number," the little human's voice pipped up from beside the assassin. Taliesin silenced his own PALM as Segundo held his up as if waiting for a treat.

  "You're not going," Variel ordered.

  "I am a member of the Interstellar Government that represents Samudra and all other Samudra Entertainment Industries." He puffed his concave chest out, as if that would impress anyone outside a vacationer looking for the restroom.

  "And you think that will help you on Vargal?" Orn snorted, "Little Second, this is not a mine you want to invest in."

  "Why couldn't I go?" He sounded impertinent, as if he simply couldn't, nay wouldn't, go to bed until he got to stick his neck out on a black market station. There was a good chance he would hold his breath until he got his way or passed out.

  "Vargal is a place of status, a gathering of like minded individuals who must maintain an order of deceit, of proving ones place within the hierarchy," Brena's dreamy voice set to bard mode drifted across the lazy room. She never really focused properly on anyone, her eyes dri
fting about three bulkheads deep while singing the song of the shithole.

  "So I prove my place," Segundo interrupted, "flash an ID or something."

  Orn laughed so hard a candy shot out of his nose, which shifted quickly to a violent coughing fit. The assassin leaned down and whacked him across the back as he tried to get an ounce of air through the dazzle wedged in his windpipe.

  "How do you think black market denizens prove their cred to each other?" Variel asked the kid, curious to see what his answer would be.

  "A rousing game of X's?" for Segundo, the black market was buying an extra dose of aspirin a day before your limit reset.

  "I pounded my way through three guards and a set of security 'bots my first trip," Ferra said.

  "A pair of gargoyles and a banshee," Orn smiled, even through his strained voice. "Try to cheat me out of my vids, you wailing bitch. Not my fault your singing career was a total flop."

  Segundo turned to the assassin, who leaned back on the balls of his feet as if always a moments notice from jumping vertically into the air. "I dropped my guild association," Taliesin admitted above the dwarf's mutterings about how much the banshee tried to cheat him.

  Brena nodded to her own brother, filial association was good enough when high elves and government mandated murder were involved. Eventually Segundo shifted towards the Captain, the only other human on this vessel of the damned as she stood beside the elven engineer muttering about a waste of air.

  Variel leaned into the technician's ear and whispered, "You do not want to know." And she drug her finger over her deep cheek scar. It wasn't where she got it from, but it had the affect she hoped for as Segundo gulped deeply and wilted before her eyes.

  "Captain," a voice crowed out from around the corner of the embarking room, as their resident orc stuck his head into the bulging crowd, "I require a restocking of supplies. I have a list of the entire contents that were..."

  "Monde, this isn't a free stop," Variel said to her doctor. "We're here for one thing and that's it."

  The orc paused, seeming to screw up the courage to press his point, "Be that as it may, if we encounter another unexpected assault there is a good chance someone human could be left bloodless."

  Segundo paled, imagining the threat was for him, but Variel sighed and accepted the etchable pad the orcs preferred. They never trusted anything that could hinder their hand function even microscopically. She scrolled through the list, most of it bandages and syntho-plasma. Gods, she'd used up a lot more than she'd thought.

  "There is a clinic I have occasional dealings with, a trade or two, they can easily supply you."

  "All right," she slipped the pad into her pocket, "Segundo, you stay with Monde. You can teach him how to play X's or something."

  Segundo nodded slowly, scared of the orc dressed as if late for posing in a middle class boating catalogs, but more terrified of the Captain and her airlock. "Good," Variel said, "Now, unless there's any more business...Gene? WEST?"

  "If the platform is open..." the computer started, but the captain ignored it.

  "Good, let's go."

  Vargal was a station built over the gate to the far far septet of the galaxy, full of promise and young prospectors trying to make a home for trade. Then the planet below fell in with a bad crowd, spending its uninhabited nights with volcanic gasses, erupting into bouts of lava, and blasting a pocket of vented energy so brutal it knocked Vargal further out of orbit. The promising young families ditched the station for somewhere, anywhere safer than the eternally exciting and very overheated death trap. But nothing stayed abandoned in space long.

  In flocked the squatters -- those with a claim to large gaps in between stars called them; scavengers -- those who invested coin into the backbone and skin of the station said; of entrepreneurs --those that would be dealing with the types of people to inhabit a once dead space station used. Call them what you like, but Vargal was up and fully functional less than a decade after its abandonment. To add a pinch of hilarity on the part of the fates, the planet below cooled two decades into the new owners reign, and provided a fresh source of minerals to be scraped up for the thriving but not pristine market.

  Stations were supposed to be eye sores, it was part of the marketing trick to get people either down to the planet to spend their real money, or onto a sleek ship to travel to another planet to spend all their money. But Vargal took that challenge to new extremes. Pylons, normally extended out in rotatable and horizontal fashion, were torn and twisted as the station burst from her orbit. Blazes of heat toasted the legs around the central body, shifting them from a reassuring slate metal to a scorched black until Vargal looked like a corpulent spider squatting in her web as the fly ships buzzed about her gaping pinchers.

  It was not the place to bring the kids for a fun day of "Spacing!"

  "Orn..." Variel muttered to the dwarf rubbing his hand as he tried to get some life back into it. The bouncer had been particularly forceful in getting his cut this time.

  She stared over one of six viewing decks that led down to the main floor, looking across the vastness of Vargal. The distant edge of the station was little more than a few dots jumping on top of other dots. The elf pair stood awkwardly behind her, not speaking amongst themselves, while Ferra continued to brandish her favorite spanner at the man trying to determine if she was eligible for entrance.

  "What?" Orn asked Variel, listening for the loud "Oof!" as Ferra swung to get the stamp of approval. That damn black dot took forever to scrub off.

  "You took us to Vargal," Variel paused, trying to put all her rage into the next three words, "on Market Day?!"

  As Orn stepped up to the bannister a heady current of life all but threw him back. Voices, some in languages still untranslatable by the bug in his ear, mingled with the smells of un-or-never washed clothing and the ever present sinus burn of slightly burned onions. It was a human delicacy that infested the rest of the universe, but at least it covered up the body odors of the black sheep every species was quick to feign ignorance of during the galactic games.

  The seething mass of life; every organic and a few inorganics cradled their wares and wandered about the makeshift stalls, crying for someone to buy it up before a certain government got wise. A few of the more prestigious law enforcing types would sometimes get a probe up their ass and try to shut a place like this down, but Vargal was the colon of the galaxy. Not technically necessary to maintain life, but you'd feel the burn when it was gone.

  "This could be a problem," Orn admitted, watching a pair of gnomes drag a crate bursting with off-record animal dolls stuffed full of what probably weren't beans. Their claws dug into the sides of the merchandise, puncturing what would have been the left ventricle of a unicorn. As it tried to correct its mistake, piling the scattered pills into its vast pockets, pandaemonium erupted on the floor. Those gnomes wouldn't be crawling back to their holes tonight.

  Variel sighed and glanced back at her crew. "Split up, it's the only chance we have of finding anything in this place."

  "Is that wise?" Taliesin asked as the crowd parted from the gnome spill, leaving the area clean by Vargal standards.

  "Not really," Variel admitted under her breath, but in her honed cap'n voice said, "I will seek out the clinic, the rest of you pair off and search for the part. Once you find it, connect with either myself or Ferra and we'll try to find you."

  "Is that an order?" Brena asked, fully aware of the contracts she signed before boarding the ship.

  "Consider it a suggestion," Variel waved her arms about. She'd done business in places like this, in the dark days when taking a deadly risk was the only option. Given the choice, she'd rather wrestle with that midgard serpent again. It was one thing to anticipate a knife in the back down a dark alley, another when trying to get a drink from a vending machine.

  Without waiting for her crew to decide amongst themselves who would take the first step, Variel descended down the rickety ramp into the main floor of the insect hive. She passed
a stand of disturbingly normal cuckoo clocks operated by a woman shrouded in her own hair save for the bow of her nose parting the waters, a junk shop that bought up people's trash, five roasted nuts stands (never ask for the surprise bag, Golem's nuts will break your teeth), before stopping at the "You Are Here" sign. It was operated by an almost gnome-like creature, but he didn't have the hang dog eyes or the mark of ownership across its forehead. Instead, he sported a nearly pristine grey coat, his head topped with a pair of red shoes. Gnomes never quite grasped the usage of clothing, thanks to their sheen of golden body fur, only the importance it could impart to others.

  "Bys is the name, good person, and maps are my game," the gnome was a littler larger than a fat house cat, its shoeless ankles kicking into the small stand he perched upon housing a scannable map. Variel passed her hand over it, but the PALM only blinked and shuddered, as if it wanted nothing to do with this place.

  "No good, eh?" Bys rose to its feet and glanced up to her eyes, "Things ne'er updated anyway. What you want, my dear tallwalker, is directions."

  "Is that so..." Variel slipped into her noncommittal 'I'm just browsing' voice, "And you just happen to know where I could acquire some I take it."

  Bys slapped his suspenders in place -- rather impressive as he forgot to put pants on -- and grinned, the gnawing teeth of the gnomes displayed proudly. "Why yes, I believe I can direct you myself!" And then he giggled.

  "I see," she stepped back, knowing when she was part of the game. Every race had their angle, their almost subconscious drive that some scientists claimed was encoded in every strand of DNA. Most never translated it, letting the urge to exchange children for gold, building a house on top of chicken legs, or gnawing upon billy goats languish within the rest of their junk code along with vestigial tails and digesting milk. But there were always a few, usually ready to play it up for tourists, who got their jollies out of dressing the devolved barbarian when they could.