Tales from Ardulum

by J. S. Fields

  The man rubbed at his forehead. “Just…wow!”

  Neek clenched her jaw. When the man said nothing more, she stood, but the Terran stood too and stepped in front of her. Yorden wanted to step in then, but Neek likely enjoyed a good bar fight as much as he did.

  “Do we have a problem?” Neek asked, balling her fists.

  The man held his hands up and shook his head. “No, no. Of course not. But you’re her. In school, we learned that Neeks aren’t even allowed to leave their world because you’re all afraid you’re going to miss the second coming of your god planet.” He leaned back against the bar and seemed to puff his chest. “So, if your planet-thing does come, what does that mean for you? Religiously, I mean.”

  “It’s not going to come, and if it does, I don’t give a titha ass,” she said acerbically. “If you want to debate theology, I can give you my uncle’s personal comm line. It’s not like I’m using it.”

  He took a step closer to her, his hands becoming more animated. Yorden stiffened. This was not boding well for his chances of Neek agreeing to his offer. “Yeah, but if it does exist, right—let’s just say it does—and it comes, and you’re here, do all the other Neeks go on the planet and zoom off to heaven or something and you’re left here with the rest of the dregs? Does that keep you up at night?”

  “Could we please stop talking about this?”

  “Huh?” His eyes kept roaming, but not in a “let’s go somewhere quiet” way. No, now he was going to drink in every last detail of her appearance and her accent, and if Neek didn’t hit the guy soon, Yorden would.

  “So, what’s it like?” he asked in an excited whisper.

  Neek wrinkled her nose. “What’s what like? Talking with strange Terrans in bars?”

  He laughed and then gestured at her torso. “This. You. Your exploratory mission of one. The involuntary Youth Journey, as it were.”

  That was too far. Yorden pushed his way to the bar.

  “The what?”

  The man’s smile turned vaguely predatory. “I know you’re an exile. Hell, the whole Charted Systems knows you’re an exile. What’s it like wandering the galaxy in search of meaning and handsome men willing to buy you drinks?”

  “She’d have to find some, first.”

  Yorden came up behind her suitor, snorted, and raised an eyebrow. He had to play this exactly right, or he’d be out of a pilot before she even looked at him. Not a rescue, but a well-timed intervention. Yorden was definitely not dashing enough to be a hero anyway.

  “You gamble, Neek?” he asked, nonchalant.

  “Get lost, buddy.” The blond man tried to push Yorden back, which was ridiculous. Yorden was twice his width, and a jazzercise butt only got you so far. The man nudged Yorden’s hip thrice, each time progressively harder, until Yorden finally elbowed him so hard that the blond man crashed to the floor, wheezing.

  Yorden held out his right hand to Neek, palm up. “I’m Yorden Kuebrich, captain of Mercy’s Pledge. You gamble?”

  Neek blinked slowly and looked from the gasping man to the bar at large. No one was even looking at them, not even the bartender, which Neek appeared to have trouble processing.

  “Well?”

  “Didn’t, didn’t I see you on that Oorin station?”

  Well, she was paying attention. Bonus for piloting, but hopefully he wasn’t coming across as stalker-level creepy.

  The man on the floor got his knees under him, and Yorden kicked them back out while he tried to figure out how best to play his hand. The yellow-haired man collapsed again. Neek took a step back.

  Right. She needed space. He definitely didn’t want her backed into a corner. He knew exactly what he’d do in such a situation, and they were far too similar to take that risk.

  “Oorin Station? You mean Callis Spaceport?” Yorden asked, trying to keep his voice bland. “Yeah, I did see you there. You slimed me, then got thrown around by a Risalian asshat. Hard to forget. Anyway, cards? No one at my table cares how many fingers you have.”

  Neek shoved her hands back into her pockets and stared at Yorden, emotions playing across her face. He’d lose her in another minute unless she got a hook, which meant it was time to put an offer on the table.

  “I need a pilot.”

  Neek’s eyes became sharp, her jaw clenching. The blond man groaned on the floor, but Neek didn’t even glance his way.

  Yorden inclined his head towards his table. “I want to see how you do with something that isn’t my ship first. Come sit.” He pushed his way around a few patrons and back to the cheap plastic table. He didn’t look back to make sure Neek followed, but he was relieved when she came up next to him.

  “But I don’t gamble,” Neek said incredulously as she eyed the other card players. “I’m just a pilot.”

  “And we’re just tramp captains,” Yorden rebutted. He pulled a scarred plastic chair out for her and pointed at it. She didn’t sit immediately, which was understandable, so Yorden gave her a moment to take in the crowd. One of the Terrans, the paler of the two, was missing both eyes. The other had his hair shaved into two purple circles on either side of his head and had clearly had his nose broken one too many times. The Minoran was heavily tattooed and missing both his tail and back left leg. They were all old like Yorden, well past their prime, but carried enough institutional memory that they could have been museums on their own.

  “Sit,” Yorden demanded, taking the pageantry up a notch. Big hands or not, if she couldn’t even be goaded into defiance, she wasn’t going to be a good fit for the Pledge.

  When Neek hesitated, he made a grand gesture of sweeping off the seat. “Little Journey youth. You want to fly, then you have to play. Sit.”

  Neek’s hands came out of her pockets, trailing stuk. “Andal screw you,” she snarled in Common. “I don’t need this job.” She turned and tried to push around various unwashed beings to the door, leaving a clear and wet trail of stuk in her wake.

  Yorden grinned.

  “I think you’ll find ‘go fuck yourself’ more appropriate!” he yelled back smugly. “And you do want a job, because Oorin dredgers are dull as fuck and I doubt you left your homeworld to babysit an intra-system diamond transport.”

  “I got exiled.” Neek stalked back to him, her fists balled, her stuk now flaking white.

  One of the Terrans at the table chuckled.

  Neek spat on the ground. “Why would I choose you? I don’t even know you.”

  Yorden met the raw emotion with the best thing he could offer: facts. “Because you’re too thin and the Risalians don’t care enough about Neek physiology to see that you’re not meeting your calorie counts. Because you’re depressed and no amount of stuk can hide the scars on your arms. Because you belong here. Well, not here here, but out in the broader Charted Systems. Where there’s opportunity. And ships. And people who don’t give a fuck about Ardulum.” His voice lowered. “I’d have thought that was obvious.”

  “How about I punch you in that bilaris fly nest on your face? And when you swing back, you’ll get arrested, but I’ll only get a lecture, and we’ll see how sanctimonious you feel as you’re hauled out of here by Risalian sheriffs.”

  Yorden’s stomach flipped to the sound of the other captains laughing. That was good steel she was showing, but not quite the right kind. “Journey youth” was a safety net she couldn’t keep using if she signed with him. Yorden decided to prod a bit deeper. “Playing the Journey youth victim card? Maybe you do belong in this bar, then.”

  “I belong back on Neek!”

  “Yeah? So, why are you here?” He pointed to her seat and then slapped two red bioplastic cards in front of her. The Minoran put a tall glass of clear liquid in front of them. “You think you’re going to get back to your planet working mineral transport? You think you won’t slowly starve to death on that dredger with Oorin food that your body can barely digest? Think following the rules and being a good little Journey youth who keeps her head down is going to keep the Risalians out
of your business? You don’t know a goddamned thing about the Systems, do you, Neek?”

  Finally, she came for him directly. “I know tramp transport isn’t a profession a parent would encourage. Are you even allowed to sign Journey youths, or is your ship such a waste of space that you can’t afford anyone else?”

  Yorden pointed a finger towards her. He didn’t have to fake these emotions. Someone taking jabs at the Pledge hurt. “I’ll tell you what I know, kid. I know the Risalians don’t have enough cutters to spare to run their Neek andal to Risal. I know they hire tramp transports ‘cause no one else wants to mess with your finicky, little shit trees. I’m in your planet’s orbit half a dozen times a year, and Journey youths don’t have to register on a manifest with their name or species. And I figure you—despite being a stuck-up, entitled teenager used to having the world listen to her every whine—would give just about anything to get back to a world where you’re not simultaneously a nobody and the galaxy’s biggest celebrity.”

  Neek didn’t have any words. Well, Yorden supposed she had a lot of unproductive words, but he had her, and she knew it. He knew what exile meant for her. He knew who she was. Yorden was a betting man, and he would bet the Mercy’s Pledge that there was a settee-shaped hole in Neek, and she’d give just about anything, would put up with just about anything, to get a glimpse of her homeworld again.

  Still, he didn’t want her defeated. He needed her defiant, and she wasn’t quite there yet.

  Neek sat.

  “Rounds,” the eyeless human said, tapping the table. “Put ‘em out.”

  Neek glared at Yorden and then emptied her pockets. Two rounds, a small thimbleful of lint, and something pink and jiggly that looked a little too much like Spam got added to the center pot. Yorden cursed to himself. Either she was horrible with money, which he doubted, or the Oori weren’t paying her shit.

  Neek reached for the top card, fingers gummy with stuk. The thin bioplastic stuck instantly, and she flicked her wrist, trying to dislodge it. In doing so, she spread her hand as wide as she could, stretching all eight digits. Yorden grunted. The Minoran neighed. They didn’t care how many fingers she had, sure, but her handspan was still pretty damn impressive.

  Neek snarled and downed the drink in front of her. Yorden didn’t even know what was in it. They’d already finished the Minoran pisco-like drink, and he hadn’t touched his single malt yet. The whatever-it-was probably hit her fast given her practically concave stomach. Neek grimaced, coughed, and then retried to dislodge the card. The bioplastic held fast to her stuk.

  “I don’t even know the rules,” she muttered.

  “Hit or stay,” the Minoran returned. “Pick one or the other.”

  “Stay.” She said the word with a sneer, which Yorden definitely admired.

  “You have a two and a five,” Yorden said as the Minoran hit the other players. “Not a good call.”

  “I’ve got twenty-one!” the purple-haired Terran whooped and scooped the pot towards him. “Suckers!”

  Neek swung her whole arm towards Yorden’s midsection, flicking her wrist enough to send the wet card onto his chest, where it stuck. “I thought you wanted a pilot,” she said through gritted teeth. “What am I doing here?”

  Yorden ignored her question in favor of another jibe. She was too passive for a half-starved, exiled pilot being forced to gamble away her last rounds, and he needed to get them out of the bar, where they could talk without spectators. “I thought Neek were good with their hands, or were you exiled for being awkward?”

  “Shut up!” Neek stood and pushed the deck across the table, the top few cards sliding off and onto the floor. Of course, another few stuck to her palm. She pulled them off with a squelching sound and a long string of clear mucus that she flung in Yorden’s direction.

  “There’s a Journey youth lodge down the road. Nice warm bed, and they’re probably playing Go Fish. More your speed?”

  Neek screamed, grabbed the sandwich-shaped perf in front of Yorden, and stormed out of the bar, exiting through the emergency door to the back alley. After a few moments, Yorden followed, far enough behind that she hopefully wouldn’t notice him. Small mammals skittered in the darkness, and the air smelled like urine and feces. He knew the alleys here well enough. They were all gross, stinking shitholes. Even if he lost sight of her for a few moments, there were few places she could go.

  Except, she was clearly savvy enough to know she was being followed. From at least two alleyways over, Yorden heard her shout at him.

  “I can find my own damn way to Neek! I don’t need handouts from some fluffy Terran old enough to be my grandfather. So, damn you, damn Terrans, and damn Mars!”

  Yorden followed the sound of her voice around a crumbling biometal wall to behind a discarded sofa. Mars’ two oblong moons reflected enough light that he could see her silhouette among the piles of trash and the occasional patch of red soil.

  Neek didn’t turn to look at him. Instead, she attacked the perf—cramming a large corner into her mouth, seemingly oblivious to how dry and bland it tasted—and kicked the wall.

  “Is there anywhere in the Charted Systems I can go where I won’t be patronized like a teenager or gawked at like an endangered animal?” she asked, mouth full, although Yorden wasn’t sure if she was asking him or the wall. He stayed silent.

  A slow breeze kicked up a swirl of red dirt and tossed it down the alley. It brought a chill as well, and Neek shivered, took a deep breath, and leaned back against the wall. Her eyes closed.

  Calm, unfortunately, wasn’t where he needed her. A calm Neek would go right back to her dredger and slowly starve herself to death so she could avoid Journey youth hostels and beings who cared about how many fingers she had. Yorden knew depression, and he knew diaspora, and while Neek didn’t need a savior, she sure as hell needed a friend. Preferably a friend with access to her homeworld.

  And Yorden needed a pilot.

  “It smells like shit out here. You’re better off inside, even with that piss-haired suitor of yours.”

  Neek threw the mashed remains of the perf at Yorden’s head. The food crumbled into his beard, bits drifting to the packed dirt below. He stayed still, forcing himself not to react.

  “Would you just leave me alone?”

  Yorden stared at her, one hand on the brick wall. He carefully schooled his tone to neutral. “I’d like to offer you a job, I think.”

  “Go fuck a titha!” she spat back. “I’m not here for your amusement.”

  “This would be a bad place for it,” Yorden responded calmly. He shook out the crumbs from his beard. “You’re a long way from ‘badass with a blaster.’ We could fix that though—the blaster part. I’ve got a bit of a collection. You’d be welcome to investigate it.”

  Neek kicked the wall again, sending up a plume of red dust, and snarled.

  Yorden dropped all pretense. This was where he had wanted her—angry, her pride stripped away so she could see how much shit she was in. Not that she couldn’t make it on her own—hell, he had, but his life would have been a shit-ton easier with another person who maybe halfway understood what it was like to live on the fringe of the Systems.

  “Kid, listen. From the way that shirt hangs on your shoulders and the way you keep licking your lips, I’d say you were hungry. Oorin food printers aren’t designed with bipeds in mind, so I’d say that you’ve been hungry for a while. Maybe you took that gig because you wanted a job, a reliable one, although maybe not a safe one, away from crowded bars and ogling eyes.” He leaned against the wall but came no closer. “It would be better on the Pledge. I mean, not a lot better, but some. You wouldn’t be starving anyway.” He wasn’t goading, and he wasn’t baiting. He was a captain, and this was a job offer. A solid one. And Neek was finally in a place to really listen to it.

  “I don’t want anything from you,” Neek barked. “I was handling that man just fine. My job is fine. I’m fine.”

  Yorden shrugged. “Then, by all means, go back
inside. But I thought you were looking for a pilot job? I’m interested in finding a pilot with a wide handspan and a low tolerance for bullshit. You fit the bill perfectly. Interested?”

  “No.”

  Yorden crossed his arms. “Really? My ship maneuvers a lot better than a dredger. Don’t tell me that doesn’t set your heart aflutter. A tramp is a long way from a dredger, and a very long way from a back alley on Mars.”

  Neek took a long time to respond. So long, in fact, that Yorden thought he might have misread the situation—pushed her too far. He mentally berated himself and tried to figure out how he could fix the situation, or at the very least not have the kid run off to a worse job than she already had. But, before he could open his mouth, Neek finally met his eyes, and Yorden saw hope there for the first time.

  “Why are you asking me?” she asked tightly.

  Yorden almost shrugged, but then thought better of it. “I need a pilot, and I think we have a decent chance of not killing each other inside tight quarters. Also, I—” He choked on the next words. “I maybe could use someone to talk shit to on long hauls. The Pledge isn’t much for conversation.”

  “I’m not at all personable,” Neek responded.

  “That isn’t part of the job description.”

  Neek rubbed at her nose, and Yorden watched those little sparks of hope turn into a blaze. “I like precision flying. No guesswork. Charts, maps, appropriate use of fuel with the occasional dynamic display to test turn radii. And I don’t like to be told how to do my job.”

  “Not many do. You’ll have your own quarters and your own code for the food printer and the comm. Pay is standard monthly and based upon a percentage of the profits. The percentage is negotiable.”

  “If I have my own quarters and the printer is free, I don’t care how much you pay, but it better be in diamond rounds,” Neek shot back.

  “The Mercy’s Pledge only deals with Charted Systems standard currency and Charted Systems hauls. I don’t do rules. I don’t do laws. I move what I want to move, when I want to move it. But—” He raised an eyebrow. “—I’m not interested in hiring runaways. I need a great pilot that won’t ditch me the first time we get fired upon or have a lean month. Is that you? Or are you too caught up in this martyred urchin thing to be useful?”