Merkin paused, his hand hovering over a box on his supply shelf. “Even a spaceship crash shouldn’t be enough to break cosmic glass. They’ve done force tests on the screens, you know. The only times I’ve ever heard of cosmic glass breaking were when the glass itself was defective for some reason, or when someone deliberately sabotaged the glass. Which, by the way, is hard to do. You have to really know what you’re doing to sabotage cosmic glass. It takes an expert.”
“Well, I guess mine was defective.”
Merkin grinned. “What, no enemies? That can’t be. Word around town is that you’re a smuggler.”
Nova groaned. “My reputation precedes me, I see.”
“Of course it does. You’re big news around here. It isn’t often that Daxar lets in a non-Zocronian. Then all of a sudden he lets in not just one but four humans. And without prior authorization, no less.”
“How kind of him to not let my crew and I die on Zocrone’s surface after an emergency landing.”
Merkin was using a small metal tool to carefully clear the shards of shattered cosmic glass away from Nova’s e-assistant. “I take it he didn’t give you the warmest of welcomes?”
“To put it mildly, no. He definitely did not.”
Merkin shrugged. “He really is a good guy, once you get to know him.”
“I don’t think I’ll be getting to know him. I’m planning to get off this planet as soon as possible.”
To Nova’s surprise, Merkin looked a little sad. “Ah, that’s too bad. But to be expected, I suppose.”
“Too bad? Daxar says all of you hate outsiders.”
Merkin laughed, and Nova thought she detected just the tiniest hint of bitterness in that laugh. “No, we don’t. Daxar is the only one so against having any outsiders in Zocrone. I suppose you can’t blame him though, given what happened.”
Merkin was fitting a new screen over the e-assistant, carefully aligning the edges as he squinted down at his work. But as intrigued as Nova was by Merkin’s work, she was far more interested in what Merkin had just said.
“Something happened? What happened?”
Merkin never took his eyes from the e-assistant screen as he spoke. “Back when Daxar was just a teen, and his father was Chief, Daxar was quite a hotheaded young thing. He thought he knew better than his father how to run the city, and he thought his father was old-fashioned and wasn’t allowing the city to make progress.” Merkin paused for a moment to chuckle. “Typical teenager.”
“Why did he think his father wasn’t allowing progress?”
“He wasn’t allowing trade with the Praznians. I don’t know if you’re old enough to remember, or if news of this scandal ever made it all the way to Galaxy Two, but the Praznians were a group of aliens from a tropical planet—a real tropical planet, not an artificial tropical world inside a dome like we have here. The Praznians were growing and selling a tropical fruit they called calamansi, which they claimed would make alien races of all sorts grow healthier and stronger. Supposedly it could extend life spans by up to fifty percent. They had some seemingly legitimate testimonials and scientists backing them up. It was a huge craze around Galaxy Four.”
Nova frowned. “Nope, I never heard about that.”
“Well, the craze didn’t last very long. It turned out the fruit was nothing special. It was just some random tropical fruit. But the Praznians were contaminating the fruit with rapidly-spreading diseases that had horrible affects on almost every kind of alien race. Their plan was to take over this Galaxy before anyone realized what was happening, which would then give them leverage and resources to continue spreading across the Seven Galaxies, taking over more and more planets as they went. Luckily, several planets in this Galaxy were wary of the fruit and wouldn’t allow it to be imported, even though it was supposed to provide a major boost to local economies and make everyone live longer. Because enough planets refused the fruit, the disease was not able to get out of control enough for the Praznians to take over Galaxy Four. Oh, certainly, there were still many, many deaths. But not enough. The inter-Galactic communities worked together to quickly develop a cure and a vaccine, and Galaxy Four was saved.”
“So how does Daxar fit in with all of this?”
“He wanted to bring the calamansi fruit to Zocrone, but his father wouldn’t allow it. His father was one of the wary ones. Daxar was convinced that Zocrone was missing the biggest thing to hit the Seven Galaxies since commercially viable personal wormholes had been developed. He thought his father was too overprotective and was holding back progress. So he snuck in a shipment of calamansi.”
Nova’s eyes widened. “But…Zocrone is a domed city. It’s incredibly susceptible to fast-spreading viruses.”
Merkin nodded. “It is. Luckily for us Zocronians, it turns out that we are one of the rare alien species that happens to be somehow immune to the disease the calamansi was carrying. Daxar might have gotten off without too much trouble, if not for the fact that the particular shipment of calamansi he smuggled in happened to contain an insect that is extremely destructive to tropical plants, and is also extremely difficult to exterminate.”
“Oh shit. I can see where this is going.”
“Before anyone realized what was happening, almost all of our plant life had been destroyed. Not only was this beautiful world we live in suddenly ruined, but our oxygen supplies reached critically low levels. The plant life in this city dome produces the majority of our oxygen supply. With all our plants destroyed, we started quickly breathing through our emergency oxygen reserves. Daxar’s father had to ship in extra oxygen, at great cost to Zocrone.”
“Daxar must have been in some deep shit.”
“Yeah. His father was ready to disown him and kick him off the planet completely. But Daxar determined to find a way to pay for all the extra oxygen.”
“But that must have been millions of credits worth!”
“Oh, it was. But Daxar found a way. He opened up a new Zekkardite mine. We already had a small mine, which supported our city reasonably well. But there’s more Zekkardite out there on Zocrone than we could sell in a hundred lifetimes. The problem is that opening a new mine is an enormously dangerous project. I won’t bore you with the details, but basically the entrances to many of the underground tunnels where Zekkardite is stored have accumulated naturally forming basestos over the years. It’s not a huge amount, usually, but it’s far more volatile than the synthetic stuff, which makes opening a new mine here almost a suicide mission. In fact, we’d lost so many Zocronians to basestos explosions that Daxar’s father had actually prohibited any new mine openings.”
“No wonder Daxar has such strong feelings about basestos.”
“Huh?”
“Never mind. Keep going. So I’m assuming Daxar found a way to open a new mine.”
“That he did. He just went for it, and the kid got sludging lucky. He found an entrance with barely any basestos accumulated. He still caused an explosion, but it was such a small one that he escaped with only a couple burns and a nasty gash on the side of his head. Once the mine was open and a team ensured that there was no more basestos around the entrance, we started mining in there. And let me tell you, that mine is big. We could have all our people mining out there for five hundred years and still not tap it out. The new mine brought much needed cash to Zocrone. Not only did it pay for oxygen, but we refurbished all of the buildings in the city, replanted our tropical forests, and built a reserve of spaceships to provide protection in case of enemy attacks. In the end, Daxar made life a lot better for every Zocronian.”
“But he still feels guilty.”
“Yeah. It’s been two decades, and he still can’t shake the guilt. His father passed the title of Chief on to Daxar with his full blessing, and pretty much everyone in Zocrone loves Daxar. But he can’t see it. He still thinks we all blame him for what happened. Did he make a mistake? Sure. But he found a way to fix it, and that’s all ancient history now. He learned from his mistakes, and he’s a good le
ader. But he thinks we’re all sitting around talking about him behind his back or something.”
“But you’re not.”
“No, we’re not. The only criticism most people have is that they wish he didn’t keep things so closed off to outsiders. Most outsiders aren’t that bad. Sure, there are exceptions, but most races aren’t like the Praznians were. It’d be nice to get a little more diversity in here.”
“But Daxar doesn’t agree.”
“No,” Merkin sighed. “He thinks he’s protecting us by using this dome as a wall to keep people out. He swears up and down that he’ll never make the mistake of trusting a non-Zocronian again. And he won’t budge on that position. He thinks by holding fast to his extreme policy that he’s protecting us. But he’s just shutting us out from the world. It holds back progress. It’s hard for me to learn about new developments in my field. Our artists are not exposed to the wider world of inter-galactic art. Our medics and doctors have a hard time keeping up with the latest trends and breakthroughs in medicine. I could go on, but you get the point.”
“Wow,” Nova said. It was all quite a lot to take in. She didn’t think that what Daxar had gone through excused his rude behavior, or his insistence on keeping outsiders out. But it did help her understand better why he said and did the things he did. She herself had her own demons in the past. Didn’t everyone? Some worse than others of course, but sometimes she wondered if life was just one long game of learning to outrun your past so you could at least enjoy the present for two seconds.
Merkin had fallen silent for a moment as he concentrated on his work. He had finished popping the screen back in and was now going over the edges with a small blue flame. “Sealing torch,” he explained as he finished, looking up and giving her a wink. “Keeps the screen from popping out easily, though it doesn’t do anything to keep it from shattering.”
Nova groaned. “Hopefully this one is not defective.”
Merkin frowned. “How long had you had the e-assistant before the screen shattered?”
“Um…about a year and a half. Why?”
A defective screen would have been defective from the beginning. If it broke for that reason it should have broken long before now.”
Nova’s heart suddenly starting to thud harder in her chest. “What are you trying to say?”
“I’m saying, I think the screen was sabotaged.”
Nova felt a chill go over her. “But who would want to do that?”
“I don’t know. Only you can answer that. Got any enemies?”
Nova shifted uncomfortably from one foot to another. Of course she had enemies. She was a smuggler. But it was more of the “I can’t stand to be in the same room as her” kind of enemy than the “I’d like to kill her and her crew type of enemy.” Until this basestos incident, she’d always made all her deliveries on time. She’d kept all her clients perfectly happy, and managed to avoid angering anyone too badly.
Or had she?
Suddenly, the fact that the Starburst had gone down didn’t seem so random after all. Yes, the ship was getting a bit old, but it was well-maintained. Maisie was one of the best flight mechanics in the business, and she regularly checked that ship over like it was her baby. Nothing got past her. At least nothing had, until now.
What if someone had deliberately sabotaged the ship, though? A routine maintenance check might have missed a planted problem. Nova shivered. Suddenly she felt the need to urgently understand what had gone wrong to make the Starburst crash. She hadn’t had a chance to talk to Maisie about it in detail yet, and she’d figured it wasn’t that urgent of a topic. The ship repairs would take weeks. Surely in that timeframe she and Maisie could sit down and discuss what had happened. But if there was someone out there trying to kill her, they would realize soon enough that she was still alive, despite the deadly sharp shards of shattering cosmic glass, and despite the out-of-control manner in which the Starburst had come down. And when they realized she was still alive, they’d be coming for her.
“Everything alright?” Merkin asked, breaking into her thoughts. “I don’t claim to know much about humans, but I’m not sure your face is supposed to be quite that white.”
Nova forced a smile onto her face. “I’m just worn out, I think. Are there any good bars around here? I could use a place to sit down and relax.”
“Black Hole Brews. It’s got the best drinks in town. Even the young Zocronians agree with me. It’s a Zocrone classic, and has a great homey feel to it. On Friday nights they even have live music, so you should definitely go tonight.”
“It’s Friday?” Nova had lost track of the date. Being on a spaceship for days on end, and then being in a state of unconsciousness for several more days, had made all the days run together.
“Yup, it’s Friday.” Merkin seemed amused. “Go have some fun. Your e-assistant is done. Should be good as new.”
Merkin handed the e-assistant back over to her and when Nova swiped her fingerprint across the sensor to turn it on, it did indeed come to life. A few split-second later, she could once again see the e-memo icons on her screen. She winced. Two hundred and seventy-two new e-memos. She had a feeling that quite a few of them were going to be from the basestos clients, wanting to know where the heck she was and why she wasn’t communicating with them. It must seem she had disappeared from the Galaxy. In some ways, perhaps, she had. Zocrone was only on the map because of its Zekkardite production, but Nova bet that a lot of people didn’t even know Zekkardite came from here. She wasn’t sure she would have known that off the top of her head before crashing into Zocrone’s surface.
Maybe disappearing from the galaxy wouldn’t be such a bad thing. For a few moments, Nova let herself imagine what it would be like to be in Merkin’s shoes. His business seemed to be doing okay, and he seemed to enjoy the simple, laidback way of life on Zocrone. She envied him, that he didn’t have to worry about placating angry clients who were convinced that you had mishandled their shipment of expensive, illegal shit. Sure, he might wish for more excitement and diversity in Zocrone. But Nova was beginning to think that there were some definite bonuses to being shut off from the rest of the world.
As she scanned through her messages quickly, she knew that she would never have the luxury of being so shut off from the world. It was not her lot in life. She had no skills that would earn her a living here on Zocrone. Besides, she couldn’t leave her crew without a captain. They had all taken a chance on flying with her. She couldn’t abandon them now. With a sigh, Nova pushed the button that would put her e-assistant in sleep mode. She’d have to go back to her apartment and go through these messages before she went out for drinks.
“Everything alright?” Merkin asked. “Is it working okay?”
“It’s working perfectly. Too perfectly. I haven’t accessed the intergalactic web for a few days, and now I have over two hundred e-memos to answer. You know how it goes.” Nova shrugged.
Merkin smiled. “I don’t know how that goes, actually. My life is a bit slower-paced, and I’m okay with that.”
Nova felt a pang of envy, but she smiled at Merkin. Something told her the old man deserved his slow-paced, relaxing life. He seemed like a genuinely good individual. “Well, lucky you. Anyway, thanks for the repair. How much do I owe you?”
He tried to wave her away. “It’s on the house. It’s not often I get to do a job for a human. Having the chance to chit-chat with someone from another Galaxy for a few minutes is reward enough for me.”
But Nova wouldn’t hear of it. “Nonsense. Chit-chat is fun, but it doesn’t pay the bills. How much?”
Merkin sighed. “Seventy-five universal credits, then. That’s just the cost of the screen. The labor you get for free.”
Nova grinned as she held up her arm that contained her credit chip. “Alright, seventy-five credits it is. You drive a hard bargain.”
Merkin laughed. “Enjoy your new screen. And come by to chit-chat any time. I wouldn’t mind another chance to talk to a human before
you and your crew take off. How long are you in town for?”
“For however long it takes to fix my ship. Daxar wants me out of here sooner rather than later.”
“Of course he does. But don’t let Grumpy Blue intimidate you. He likes to make all sorts of threats, but at his heart he’s a pretty laidback guy. He won’t force you out of here before your ship is truly spaceworthy again.”
“Grumpy Blue,” Nova said with a laugh. “I like that. I’ll try not to be too intimidated. And I’ll do my best to stop by again before we leave.”
She left Merkin’s shop feeling marginally better. Her e-assistant was functional again, and she had a much better understanding of why Daxar was the way he was. Knowing his past made him feel a little less scary.
What was scary was not knowing when she was going to be able to deliver the basestos, or whether it would be too late to salvage the deal.
That, and the small nagging worry in the back of her mind that her spaceship’s crash and her e-assistant’s shattering hadn’t been all that accidental after all. Nova shuddered, and quickened her step back to her apartment. Suddenly, she was quite glad that no outsiders were allowed into Zocrone’s city dome without permission.
She had a feeling that, oddly enough, this might just be the safest place for her right now in all the Seven Galaxies.
Chapter Seven
Daxar scowled as he took another sip of his beer. Usually, nothing made him happier than sitting at Black Hole Brews at the end of a long day of work. Live music only made things better, and the band tonight was playing exceptionally well. But still, he couldn’t shake this bad mood. Jarmuk and Toryx had given up on trying to cheer him up, and had gone to play darts with Kromin. So now, Daxar was sitting alone at a table in the back corner, watching everyone else have a good time while the storm clouds over his own heart grew blacker.
He knew exactly what was bothering him. The problem was, there was nothing he could do about it. He couldn’t get that sludging human out of his mind. He’d avoided talking to her, he’d reminded himself that he hated outsiders, and that he would never allow a human to live here permanently, let alone be his mate. He even forced himself to relive all the awful moments of the day he’d realized that he’d caused the destruction of the entire rainforest inside Zocrone’s city dome—just so he could remember how important it was to put the well-being of the Zocronians above his own personal feelings. Usually, reliving the worst hell he’d ever been through was plenty enough for him to get rid of any wild fantasies that might enter his mind about loosening the restrictions on who was allowed to live in Zocrone. But even that wasn’t doing the trick when it came to Nova.
Claimed by the Alien Chief: A sci fi alien romance (Zocrone of the Seven Galaxies Book 1) Page 6
