by S E Zbasnik
"Where are you going, young one?" Bys asked, as if Variel didn't easily have a good twenty years on him. "I assure you," his high voice began to reach into dog toy levels of squeaking as he grew agitated, "I am the only one on this station who can guide you."
"Uh-huh," Variel turned to a Bugbear manning a small chips stand and asked, "Could you point me to the 'Clear Veins' clinic?"
The Bugbear put down its tongs and glanced at her. The grease of the fry oil drenched its black coat until the goblin bear shone like onyx. "It is down the next aisle, to the right," it mashed out through an elongated mouth, before it pulled out a lollypop and better enunciated, "Beside the shop that specializes in livers."
For a moment Variel wanted to joke about whether they were selling, buying, or frying, but thought better of it. On Vargal the answer could be yes to all three. Instead, she nodded her head and thanked the Bugbear. It returned to its greasy life and Bys shook its tiny fist at the goblin that stole away its fun.
Variel pushed past a few people on her way towards the clinic when a voice echoed through the crowds, "Cap! Capity Cap Cap! Slow your damn excessive legs!"
She stopped, counting under her breath, as the dwarf caught up to her, "Orn, what are you doing here?"
"I ask myself that question sometimes, late at night when only the pricks of stars and the echo of my lone heartbeat can answer back. What are any of us doing here?"
"Ferra kick you out?"
"Nah, we're fine. Better'n fine," Orn waved his hand, trying to wipe away some of the perspiration beading on his forehead. A breeze rarely made it down to his altitude, and the station didn't believe in climitizing adjustors to compensate for every heat pumping, heavy breathing monster trailing about its decks. "It was that ice-cold she devil."
Variel turned, not wanting to start this rant up again, "That 'ice-cold she devil' is keeping us in fuel."
"We wouldn't need her or that one that near got you shot up if we did a few Hero Quests."
Variel shook her head, then began to walk away, "I'm not risking my neck for..."
"For a few tortured souls with more money than brains who simply cannot be parted from their 'relatives' long lost 'relics.'" Orn knew he was picking at a very old scab, an argument he refused to let heal. Sure, the Hero Quests were a bit shady. Okay, they were so shady they'd never seen the light of day. And, yeah, around half to most people who accepted one were either never seen again or wound up alone on some distant asteroid babbling about "the rise of the great one." But one job would put them so far in the black they'd have to get a new ship just to cart around their riches.
The fact the Captain knew this as well as the dwarf meant he could never work his magic on her. Most other old side jobs he could tempt with the tales of the Eye of Harsas, fabled to see to another dimension; or the Mogato Sword, quenched in the fires of the birth of the cosmos. Something with lots of fancy names that was so ancient it should have crumbled to dust by now. It'd at least guarantee him a few months worth of work before the complaints started and he was off searching the want ads.
But, as Variel put it every damn time, "I'm not here to be a hero. We do the jobs I choose and I pay you for. Clear, dwarf?"
The human seemed to have an irrational fear of being renowned throughout the universe. He used to have a prevailing theory that she'd been a spy or a double agent, working for one crest to take down another. Or even better, she's an Orc, genetically modified to appear human and infiltrate their armies. It was about this time Ferra'd tell him to shut off the damn mouth and get to bed. Now he just assumed Variel had no backbone.
Orn dodged under a pair of troll legs as he tried to keep up with the rising gait of his boss. "Or we could keep scrounging around grunge holes in the deepest parts of the galaxy, dancing to the tune of depthless children's characters who think getting into crime will be a hoot."
Variel dodged the sarcasm entirely, "Now you're getting the idea."
The few original teeth still in Orn's head ground as she refused to play the game. If she'd been watching him, she'd have stopped at the dangerous smile overtaking his face, demanding he stop his train of thought, but Variel was a few other denizens ahead by now. He jogged after and raised his voice into incriminating levels, "Oh, ah ha, how could I not see it before? It all fits into the box now."
"I'll fit you into a box, dwarf," she grumbled, feeling a few shaded eyes landing on her as Orn's amateur trained voice boomed over the din of customers. Her fingers obstinately flew up to her scar, trying to obscure it.
"Captain," he laid his hand across her slack forearm and tilted his head as if counseling her, "I understand, companionship is an important part of life, but the dulcen culture frowns upon human-elven indiscretions."
"What in the tartus are you talking about?" Variel yanked her arm back and continued to glare at her pilot as if he grew a third head, "And since when do you know a damn thing about dulcen culture?"
Orn ignored her second question, enjoying the small panic in that commanding voice. He found a crack, time to widen it, "Lithe, dark, tall -- apparently you humans are 'into that.' Why else allow a pair of high end elves to dictate and boss half the shipping schedule if you weren't trying to 'plume ones depths' as it were?"
He actually made air-quotes around his dwarven innuendo. Actual, hand raised, elbows bumping into a trolly air-quotes. Variel didn't know if she should be offended or flattered that he suddenly cared about her personal life. Her very lacking personal life.
"Orn, you're so far off course you're slipping into dark space," she said shaking her head and laughing it off. She turned away from him and continued her march to the clinic, hoping to beat the night traffic when the bars switched to the heavy in-organic stuff.
The dwarf frowned slightly, certain he'd been onto the first chink in her armor, but her voice was 100% genuine flippancy. He'd have tossed it all aside until he looked up at the back of her neck, now bright pink from some embarrassment she'd swallowed down. Orn smiled cruelly as he unwrapped a candy and popped it into his mouth. Ferra was gonna eat an earful tonight.
Variel turned the corner and stood before a recessed alcove, little bigger than one of those prefab cubicles that pop up every cycle to assist with your dwarven taxes even those who never set foot upon a dwarven world found they somehow owed. It was painted universal beige aside from a giant red splotch of graffiti and some choice curse words she didn't need her translator to correct for her. But most noticeable were the crowds of people marching back and forth, most carrying signs with poor spelling and poorer logic shouting something incoherent in a round. Apparently the committee hadn't decided upon which chant to use and went with both.
"Oh great, it's a parasite clinic," she sighed as Orn caught up behind her.
"A what?" he chewed through a toffee.
She didn't deign him with a response. Getting in and getting out before any of the protestors noticed would be preferable. Hooking her arm around the dwarf as if she were his guide she walked steadily to the door, barricaded through what looked like three pangs of bullet proof glass. Variel got past the first ring, most of them waving posters covered in a big eyed alien only found while watching fantasy vids or grown men and women wasting everyone's time and energy outside a clinic.
As she turned to take in Orn, cranking out feigned small talk, one of the protestors -- a dwarf in a shaggy coat hanging past his knees -- disengaged from his ring and approached. He was shorter than Orn, which caused her pilot to slouch a bit, as he called out in a friendly voice, "Excuse me, pardon me, Ma'am."
Variel sighed, realizing defeat as her day went from rock slide inside the volcanoes of the Trax to being drawn and quartered by four black holes very quickly. The friendly dwarf pressed a small doll, with eyes half the size of its face, into her hand. When it made contact with her skin it cried out, "What is life?" She sighed internally but took the thing that looked nothing like the alien's they were protesting to save.
The dwarf returned to his people, a
ll holding hands and chanting something indecipherable above the din of station life. Almost no eyes of Vargal turned to the protestors; they were such a staple they became invisible. Orn squirmed sensing the disturbance but not certain what the hell was going on. "What's with the doll?"
"You never heard about the 'love all life' group?" Variel asked her supposedly other worldly companion, then realization dawned, "No, of course you wouldn't. You don't have to. It's a spore, or fungus, or some insect thing that enters through the nose and attaches to the lungs. Over the course of 2-3 years it takes complete control of the victim's brain. After the years it digs its way out through the skin."
"Sounds like a perfectly respectable reproduction cycle," Orn said sarcastically, trying to not breathe through his nostrils or mouth.
"Calm down, you're fine. It doesn't go for dwarves. Just gnomes, humans, goblins and occasionally the odd elf or two."
Orn started to breathe again, causing the piquant body odors of Vargal to fill his lungs. "They ain't come up with a cure yet?"
"Oh no, it's a relatively simple one. Easier to take a shot once every two years to prevent it, though. The protesters are here on behalf of the fungus."
"Why in the undertow would anyone give a shit to protest about that?"
"Because, the 'fount' becomes highly suggestive," Variel said to her pilot, still eyeing up the circle of life watching for anyone to make a hostile move. One of them was looking over their signs for typos and opening up the design program on the poster. "Introduce a few spores into a population and you have readily cheap labor. While under its command the host requires little food or sleep, and isn't about to go on strike or demand a raise."
Variel glanced up to see a small gnome, wrapped in a cloak to try and shelter her appearance, inching towards the door. A human had his arm wrapped around the gnome to help her stilted gait; she'd let the parasite take too deep of hold. Though with the new enforced waiting periods and lung scans from "reputable hospitals" it was a wonder anyone broke free of the hold.
"Remind me to never leave my bed," Orn said, shuddering as they approached the reinforced door.
"You ever get to bed?" Variel asked her pilot, who chuckled but didn't respond. The captain didn't bother looking back as she held open the clinic's door first for her ambassador and then the gnome girl. She scampered inside, grateful for the break as the rest of the every-life-form-is-sacred eyed her up like a rattled dog in a cage. Variel looked at the doll still in her hands, and let it drop to the ground as she walked into the clinic.
"Excuse me, pardon me, oh do forgive my intrusion," the bard's overly sugared voice was so out of place as the three elves descended into the mech section of the bazaar people dodged out of the way on instinct. No one trying politeness to get through the mounds of Vargal was a simple tourist. Various eyes followed after the group, some warding themselves against whatever powers a woman dressed for a night under the spotlights could wield.
Ferra led the triangle, occasionally jamming her elbows into anyone that tried to encroach upon her limited personal space, but only the chipper voice of the dulcen got anyone to step back. It gnawed at her as she cursed Orn for doddering off just because she got into a minor discussion with the bard. There wasn't going to be any blood...probably. Ferra glanced up at a sign written in dwarvish trade with a few curious troll phrases slipped in. "The best cancelable weapons in all the galaxy. Silica dissolvers won't see you going." Where were the damn proper mech stalls? Everything was guns, ammo, and the parts to fix the guns so they didn't blow off your arm.
"Would you stop doing that," Ferra grumbled
"Doing what? Excuse me," Brena's bracelets jangled as she pushed aside a set of women shilling a false ID face, the charms honed so they could only be heard in elven frequencies.
It set Ferra's teeth the way only something elven or her husband leaving wrappers in the bed could, "Acting as if you're the boss of everyone around you."
"I do no such thing!" A false edge of near emotion crossed Brena's face as she turned to her brother. He was far too consumed with what appeared to be a fine selection of cufflinks formed from ogre feces to respond to her.
Ferra turned back to watch her prey huffing at the indignation of being called out and recited an old taunt the tennens used whenever a Dulcen entered their territory, "'You can rip its wings off, but that butterfly will never be a caterpillar.' You never should have left the tree, little butterfly, to feast amongst us worms."
"I will have you know I have been 'down amongst you caterpillars' for over a century now." She paused amongst the endless running stream of bodies, a rock choking up the flow. Her jangling fists were close to landing on her hips in consternation like an exhausted child.
"And you haven't spent a second of it in the dirt." Ferra knew she shouldn't poke the high elf. They couldn't help the lot life doled out for them, forced to spend their lives high above the clouds where very little oxygen could reach their overtaxed brains. It seemed almost cruel, but this bard's preachiness made it so much easier for her.
"I!" Brena turned to her brother who, if he'd been human, would have whistled loudly and slunk away with his hands in his pockets.
Brena deflated, "I suppose you are correct in some fashion. My time amongst the galaxy has been limited in scope." Her head bowed in elven conciliatory fashion.
"Shit," Ferra threw her hands up in rage, "You can't even fight proper! You don't give in, you call me a dung faced grease worm and insinuate my mother's a tail pipe."
The dulcen leaned back, her face awash in confusion, "I...I do not understand. What would be the point of bringing up your lineage in this conversation?"
Ferra collapsed her head into her hands and glanced at a gargoyle watching the fight with the curiosity of someone trapped in a booth for the next ten hours. "Elves," she muttered to the stone monster who lifted its wings in solidarity. "I...forget it," she threw up her arms, knowing when to give up. It was one thing elves were renowned for. Ferra began her canvasing walk into the crushing parts market, still scanning for anyone trying to unload something older than the last gnome crop. Over her shoulder she added, "You don't have to get on with me, just get away from me and I'll be happy."
She stalked deep into the mass of twitching life, leaving behind the pair of dulcens and failing to notice the closest to pain Brena could suffer. Her chosen profession required that she be at all times approachable and beloved, but also partly aloof and mysterious. It was the kind of balance that drove nearly all other species straight back to the arms of retail work, but flourished under the elven love of duality. It was an old joke that one wasn't a full elf until you became your own worst enemy.
Brena was no stranger to people disliking her, jealousy was to be expected, as was xenophobia from anyone off the Tree coming into contact with a dulcen. Few left, even fewer outside official capacities. But this burn of Ferra stung much deeper, a fact she had troubles coming to terms with.
"Hey, Bardie!" Ferra's growly voice called over the crowds, "if you get your butterfly ass lost, I ain't coming to save it!"
Brena beamed her hidden smile, taking whatever words she could from the other elf on the ship. Gathering up Taliesin, the pair politely shoved their way through the crowd to find the engineer tapping her spanner against the decorated table of a booth boasting "The Best Parts You Can Afford To Buy!"
A rusalka manned the station, her hair continuously pillaring about her bedraggled head as if she were still beneath the water. Her pale skin, drawn into a death rictus, shimmered greatly under the waning station lights. Water spirits looked out of their element in space, non-corporeal ones even more so. She wafted her ethereal hand towards the section of images flipping before her on the imbedded screen.
"No, no, no!" With each flick of the screen Ferra's voice grew angrier, and she already started at a 10.
"Perhaps what you seek is no longer within the realm of possibility," the rusalka's voice was soft as a summer rain, and mournful as a morning do
ve.
"It's not some magical fairy dust that will shit out ice cream," Ferra leaned into the water ghost, her anger rising with each plink of her pet spanner. "It's a round chunk of plastic you fit over the injector so we don't all go splat splat against the wall."
"Ah, you wish to place a part order!" and the undead spirit yanked out a holographic inventory catalog of space parts. It was only once ever printed; the weight of which ripped through the planet's crust straight to the core where the excess gravity created a micro blackhole. This was before they added the supplemental addition and index.
"It's a class d cruise ship built so far back most people weren't even aware humans had space travel," Ferra said watching the pages fly back. There was no rhyme or reason to the catalog; doomsday devices were stored next to gene splicers, which were all housed under the "Peace Keeping" category. Ships were indexed by some mad genius who rated every one by the size and abundance of the cup holders. The Elation-Cru came with very few.
"Ah, that's it! That little piece of plastic right there," Ferra's finger paused over the floating image of a black o-ring. That damn little thing was the cause of a throbbing burn at the back of her head she usually called Brena.
The rusalka copied down the number and inputted it into her official representative calculator, "I fear that specific part is not in any existence across the station, but I may order it for your hands and have it within..." she waved her non-corporeal fingers across the transdimensional keyboard and chirped, "two to three business weeks!"
Ferra's head smacked into the desk, "Variel's gonna kill me."
"Shall I place that order for you?"
The elf sighed before sticking out her PALM for scanning, "Yeah, go ahead."
"Horse to D-17."
The orc sighed, but placed the pip into the square. "Miss," he said and stared over his own notes, "Archer to B-3."
