by Martin Perry
Kerra was silent in her bunk, and Thom had hopped up to his a few moments before. Charles slid into his own, sensibly taking the one below Thom.
Maur was left to his own devices. He sat on the floor, back to the bench below his and Kerra’s side of Hypatia. The toolbox sitting on his bunk was pulled out from over his shoulder. Maur unpacked, and with a finger he hooked the floor panel open and plugged into the service access.
With his panel booted up, he ran an initial scan of the ship.
It took Maur a second to notice it, but a hand had swung down from the bunks. Kerra’s fingers twisted his hair a couple of times. The suggestions didn’t last long enough though, and by the time he had collected his smarts and swung his head around her hand was already gone.
He sat mouth agape, panel hanging in his hand, and began to make moves up towards her bunk.
“Good night Maur,” she said, his foot resting on the base of his own bunk, hand on the side of hers.
His body slumped, disappointed more than upset. The curtain that separated them seemed like a stone wall, and her words were like reinforced concrete. Hint taken, he rolled into his own bed, abandoning his tinkering, and tried to settle down.
The night was not well-slept. On top of the frustration now wriggling through every part of his body, he was left with the thoughts of what it all meant. Apology? Come-on? Friendly gesture?
The bumping of drunks crashing into the side of Hypatia didn’t help, and once the hum of the craft became background noise he could hear the music pounding too. All he wanted was to head out and get wasted. Moderate Formai was one hell of a town once you got past the hypocrisy of the Moderate Council. Plus, the drink would either calm his frustration or give him the courage to out his feelings; even if Maur wasn’t sure exactly what they were.
Unfortunately, the Captain’s orders had to be followed, and so Maur lay awake the entire night. Without a single minute of sleep, he heard the pre-set alarm of Hypatia alert them that it was technically morning. The light outside hadn’t changed, the party certainly hadn’t stopped, and neither had the mix of filthy and loving thoughts running through Maur’s head. It was infuriating. He tossed and turned in defiance of the alarm, resisting the demand to wake up even though he had never succumbed to sleep in the first place. Still, he felt like being childish and having to be grabbed kicking and screaming out of his bed seemed like an excellent retaliation.
And grabbed he was. Charles, used to his tardy nature and typically lazy behaviour, shoved a hand through the curtain of his bunk, gripped Maur’s loose-fitting shirt and started pulling. The soft new fabric of Hypatia’s bunks didn’t aide his flailing attempts to keep himself in place. Shocked, he hit the floor with a bump, but not a crash, as Charles used his strength to suspend him in the air just enough to avoid a painful collision of ass to floor.
“What the hell man?” Maur said, rubbing his eyes, feigning sleep in an effort to exaggerate the severity of Charles’ transgression.
“You didn’t hear the alarm. I was being helpful.”
“Charles, shut up,” Maur replied, unable to muster anything much more intelligent.
Charles paid no attention to Maur's words. “We’ve got a delivery to make, and a specific time to do it at. I have no want for lateness. We’re meeting the customer at the Fututio, a hotel on the edge of the entertainment district. It should be a simple hand-over, followed by the supervised financial transaction. He is a new customer, but Champion said he has a good reputation.”
“When is the meeting arranged for?” asked Kerra, slipping down from her bunk, feet already booted as they thudded down onto the floor. She stood next to Maur, her shoulder touching his lightly after slinging a pack over her shoulder; it contained their burden.
“An hour from now. We’ll leave the scout...”
“Hypatia” interrupted Thom, tying his boots while sitting on the opposite bench from where Maur stood, Charles in front of him. "Sorry, I sneezed."
“We’ll leave Hypatia,” said Charles, turning his and raising an inflexion in his voice to highlight his negative opinion of the chef’s addition, “here. We’ve been cramped up for too long.”
Charles walked past Maur, brushing into him more heavily than Kerra was resting on his shoulder. The scout was spacious, but then if he were Charles’ size he might see it differently. Charles was agitated, and desperately wanted to be out in the sun, ideally in some far-away open field. He had very little time for Moderate Formai, and Seeon in general. Drinking and parties were fun, so long as you could walk off the hangover the next day. Wandering into the wastelands that surrounded the urban zones of Seeon was a bad idea, even for somebody of his size, so getting off the planet soon was the only way to get what he wanted.
Maur would want more training as soon as they were back on Annie. Meditation seemed like a good topic to cover, Charles thought. He’d choose a peaceful location in the sim and work out the headache that the constant pounding bass had caused.
Charles smacked his fist against the release button and the rear of the scout opened out. The expected blast of morning sun and the smell of dew never came. Instead, the smell of stale body heat and disinfectant wafted into his nose. He could hold his drink, and hated the smell of the products used to clean away the liquid results of others not being likewise able. Even in the very best bars, those with the most well-to-do patrons, you could find the odorous evidence that somebody on the staff had been tasked with mopping away a pile of vomit.
It was not the scent that you want to awake to in the morning, and did nothing for the alertness of the crew. Feet thumping, hands held to faces to obscure the pressure of perpetual night-life, the team rolled out.
“I never thought I'd ever actually woken up in Formai sober,” offered Maur. “It’s completely spoiled my appetite to retire here. It doesn't look like it does in the marketing material.”
“You wanted to retire here?” asked Kerra, speaking directly to him for the first time this morning.
“Yeah, booze, parties, women,” he stopped, realising how poorly chosen his words were immediately, but would have to commit. “What’s … what’s not to like?”
Kerra didn’t really respond, so much as turn away his with distaste worn on her face. Maur, while active with the opposite sex, was never the smoothest of talkers, and most typically relied on drunken stupidity to convince women otherwise. These formative attempts at moving their relationship of the starting blocks, or at least to figure out in which direction those blocks were pointed, were not going well. He was struggling to separate the affectionate, caring individual that he might be falling for from the ruthless soldier than he knew far better. Maur found himself addressing the latter, upsetting the former and setting progress back.
“Well, at least that’s what a less mature version of me thought,” Maur tried, digging a hole six feet deep. “Of course I’m looking to end up somewhere far less materialistic and alcohol obsessed.” Pathetic, he thought to himself.
He had raised his head a little at the end of the sentence, putting on his best sincere face. Kerra darted back a mixed look of disbelief and disappointment; one eyebrow raised while she pouted. Beta Crew headed out of the alleyway, which had now become brighter with the surrounding walls now showing the usual parade of visualisations and advertisements. They hadn't gone unnoticed when they had first driven down it, but they were detected and targeted specifically and individually in the open. The ads weren’t obnoxious in any way, and the flame-like texture of the walls and their size meant they couldn’t make out what you were being sold without standing well back. Without natural light though their cascade of purples, blues and more irritated the eye, constantly flashing in their peripheral vision.
“Even in my youth,” said Charles, “I would never have dreamt of living here. It is a place of constant annoyance.”
Charles growling face kept the majority of the partying tourists and natives out of Beta Crew’s way as they made headway towards the hotel. T
he very few that did crash into him, simply bounced off and made contact with the filthy ground, Charles striding ahead impatiently.
High, drunk, or both, they lay giggling in a pool of their own disgraceful behaviour. Maur understood where Charles was coming from, but didn’t entirely believe that his attitude would remain the same if they had been there for pleasure rather than business. He had seen the big guy fall about drunk a few times, enough to know that his sober hatred wasn’t impenetrable given the right tool set of liquors and narcotics.
There were plenty of seetans enjoying themselves too, of course. Farmers and production workers from the constantly bright day side of Seeon cracked colloquialisms as they slapped each other on the back. They were far bigger in build than the slight figures found here, years of hard labour building them up to outweigh the leisure workers by a significant degree. Seetans resembled humans in body structure, although their glassy white skin and odd facial features set them apart.
Their bodies were covered in a see-through film, hard but still flexible. Inherently therefore, seetans were strong and durable individuals. This strength stood them in good stead when dealing with aggressive forces, but had only served to extend the civil war which had ravaged their planet’s surface. Seetans were hard to kill, and neither side of the war had been inclined to end it until the body count hit an unwritten maximum. The rest of a planet's natural life were all but forgotten until then.
Despite their suitability as soldiers, the base requirement to procreate and make fools of themselves seemed to have overtaken the desire to fight. Their bald heads, bigger than a human’s, featured large oval eyes that sat at an offset angle from the horizontal axis of their skull. They were fleshy, lacking the coating that the rest of a seetan body benefits from, and without colour except for the slight outline of the iris. The exception to that rule being when they were jacked up on drugs, drink or a lack of sleep. When seetan eyes were bloodshot it was an intimidating sight, slight noses and mouths contributing to a sinister appearance.
Plenty of those gazing at Maur and the rest of Beta Crew had the thirsty anger brought to their eyes by stimulants, but the team ignored the drunkards and stared ahead to their destination. Maur always noticed how limited their fashion was. The same double-breasted tunic covered their chests and ran down to the ground; nothing covering their legs and arms too left bare. Various colours, patterns and styles of lining could be seen, but in all Seeon’s native intelligent race was scarily uniform in their dress. The females were distinguishable by their naturally large chests and curvier bodies; universal identifiers that helped avoid chatting up the wrong type of skirt.
Each and every one of them was capable of some sort of telepathy, but in most cases this amounted to little more than being able to pull off decent party tricks. More adept telepaths had, in the past, been conscripted into officer roles within the military, following a standard test undertaken during the late stages of formal education.
The Fututio came into view, not looking much different from the other tent-like structures, apart from its dimensions. It was made of the same materials, with the same style of ever-changing walls. In this case they were advertising room rates by the night. This demonstrated that it was a more upmarket bed, as most were offered by the hour in Moderate Formai. It was stretched tall, with the legs being much longer than most of the other buildings. This design was a very human decision, seetan social standing among land-owners being dictated by the acreage you had rather than the height of the buildings on it. Whoever owned it didn’t care about seetan stature. He had more rooms to sell per night than any of his competitors, whatever they thought of him.
Beta Crew walked into the roomy reception area. Marble spread out across the floor from wall to wall. The reception desk sat at the centre, round and covered in panels, parading videos of the hotel’s spa and restaurant facilities. Neatly dressed human women sat behind it, blue blazers and tight skirts fitted as snugly as their hair, tightly pulled back in regimented ponytails.
The seating areas that surrounded this circular desk were slightly tilted backwards as to allow you a better view of the lightly blue-tinted glass that made up most of the towering internal structure. It was a darker shade in the occupied rooms, but still showed the mostly bare feet of the inhabitants. Pairs of feet, in some cases more than two at a time, would stand closely together before disappearing. It was as though people were dipping their toes into a black hole, bodies completely obscured.
Maur, new to Seeon, was surprised at how human influence seemed to dominate while being part of this busy seetan resort. Humans had generally stayed away from the planet after the war. Kicking lumps into each other for so many years had the positive side effect of keeping the self-declared alpha dogs of the universe away from your business. Nobody from Earth wanted to invest in somewhere they believed might erupt into devastating war at the drop of a hat.
Thom didn’t take time to appreciate how odd a location it was, and was far more concerned with the attractive women behind the desk. He sidled up to a blonde one, rested his hip and elbow against the desk, and slid his head forward to introduce himself.
“Hi. We’re here for a meeting in about five minutes. I’m sure you know about it,” he said, cockily moving his head from left to right, packing in as much smarmy attitude as he could. The receptionist was not kind in her response.
“Excellent. Our delivery boys are usually late.” She was unimpressed, her words cold, pushing Thom up from the desk top. He ended up standing straight with a sulk on his face. “Mr. Luthais is on his way. Actually, here he is now.”
Mr. Luthais, as introduced, was walking toward them open armed, backed up by a crew of four well-built human bodyguards with menacing wrist-mounted tasers. He wore a light grey suit, with a brighter silver shirt and tie underneath. Glossy purple shoes, polished perfectly, and his bright white smile offset these dull colours. His silver hair, neatly flicked in a quiff, was noticeable on a planet with so many bald seetans, as was his light tan. He was human, but had a noticeably plasticity around his features; the evidence of the doctor’s scalpel evident despite the quality of the work.
“Ah, the crew of the Jump Cannon,” he said warmly. “What a pleasure it is to finally meet you!”
Fututio Holds Grand Opening
Today, among fireworks and free drinks, the Fututio Hotel opened its doors to the people of Moderate Formai, and indeed all of known space.
The hotel boasts a mix of single, double and luxury suites totalling 350 rooms in all. With the latest in spa activities, brand new sim facilities, and even more, it promises to delight the ever-increasing stream of tourists visiting Seeon.
The hotel’s owner was mysterious in his absence, but a spokeswoman had this to say:
“Fututio embraces the very best of what Seeon and Moderate Formai has to offer, without giving in to the seedier side of things. Guests will be able to enjoy a classy, dignified stay without losing out on all the fun.”
Room prices are to be confirmed.
From the evening issue of the Seeon Tourism Bulletin on the day of the Fututio’s opening.
Chapter Twelve
Maur looked into his eyes, trying to work out if there was some sort of deceit afoot. He had become used to that, given recent events, and the paranoia felt entirely reasonable. However, the longer he looked, the less likely it seemed that Mr. Luthais was anything other than a hard-working hotelier. Albeit, one with a terrible fashion sense.
They had been ushered into a conference room one floor up. The see-through staircases didn’t inspire confidence in the safety of the Fututio’s construction, but he was consoled by Luthais' proud proclamation that the hotel had been standing for a few years now without incident. Maur’s recent adventures meant that he now had a slight aversion to being suspended mid-air. This wasn’t something he was aware of until he had made the first steps upward towards the conference room.
The room itself was fairly traditional, and followed the trend
of human influence. It was wood panelled, like something pulled out of the past, but at the same time the modernity of the hotel pushed through. A long, heavy-looking table and matching chairs had been made out of the same material used to construct the Fututio’s interior – mostly transparent.
Unaware, with rising discomfort at their situation, Beta Crew took their seats on the right hand side of the table. Mr. Luthais sat opposite, one leg hitched over the other and his fingers interlocking over the knee.
“So, you have my package?” he asked, waving a hand vaguely in their direction.
“Uh, yeah, of course,” replied Kerra, slinging the pack off her shoulder and onto the desk.
The room’s layout made her very worried. The wood panelling would be free-standing and the walls hollow. While there were four bodyguards in sight, one for each member of the crew, there could be any number of footsoldiers hidden from view behind the panels. Formai's hotels were well known for voyeur's passages hidden in the walls. She tried to scout out any movement, and pushed her ears to pick up scuffles and shudders of rats ready to attack. There was nothing, but all of this ceremony over a small brown package seemed excessive.
“Let me tell you a bit about my hotel. I don’t get a chance to discuss how proud I am of it very often.”
“We don’t really have the time, as much as we appreciate the offer,” Kerra said, trying to get out of there fast.
“Please, please. Nonsense. I’m sure you can understand, the native hoteliers and leisure entrepreneurs don’t like how I’ve done things, so I like to share it with people who might be more appreciative. It breaks convention, something the seetans seem ever more attached to as they try to convince themselves they have moved beyond violence.”
“You don’t think they have?” asked Thom. “That might offend them.”
“I’m entirely sure I’ve done that already, and I don’t care in the slightest. What right do they have to control my opinion?”
