“Well, whatever. This is pointless.” He turned towards the door.
A sound behind him, half rustle and half creak, brought him whirling back around towards the desk. His pistol was in his hand and pointing at the plant when he realized what was happening and froze.
The plant was moving, using one if its roots to gently lower a metal box about three centimeters on edge to a place on the desk. The top of its bean shaped body twitched and a slit about the length of Nero’s forearm cracked open.
“Welcome to the Port of Sanakrat, Elmorus,” the box projected in a neutral, synthesized tone. “I am the Port Master General for this facility. Landing fees include one refueling service, one free de-icing service should the weather necessitate it, and a mandatory gratuity for the staff.”
Nero exchanged a look with Agent Khepria. “Is it the plant talking or some remo—”
“The landing fee is payable immediately,” the box continued undisturbed by his words. “There is also a mandatory daily-rental fee for the spot in which your ship is parked. This fee is collectable at the end of every full thirty-Confederate-hour period, or the approximate length of one local day. Should you require local transport, I would be happy to recommend a service.”
Khepria stepped up next to Nero and pulled herself up on the edge of the desk, straining her neck to see down past the plant.
“Please refrain from touching my desk,” the box said.
She let go. Her feet barely made a sound when they touched the floor. “Sorry.”
Accessing the local Cyberweb node. My, it is slow as Agent Khepria stated. I’ll have this being’s species for you in a moment.
“We do not require local transport. I am Abyssian Nero Graves, and this is an official visit to your world. All fees are chargeable to the Confederate Space Authority or Star Corps, whichever is more convenient,” he stated as he had a dozen times before on a dozen different worlds.
The port master moved a tentacle-like root with a white, wet-looking knob on the end into view from beneath the desk. “I can see you are an Abyssian. You bear the Eye-That-Watches-The-Galaxy on your coat, however, there is no quantum link between this system and the capital, so this port cannot accept your monetary credit at this time.”
Nero jerked his head back and his eyes widened. “What?”
“The CSA’s credit is always accepted on all worlds of the Confederation.” Khepria’s ears flapped above her head.
“This world’s status is in dispute. The Broghite Commonwealth took the Veronis System ninety-nine local days ago. It is expected that Elmorus is next.” The plant-being rustled as though a stiff wind had just blown through the customs room.
He ground his teeth. “This world is not taken, yet.”
“You still have to abide by Confederate law,” Khepria’s accent, more apparent when she was angry, made it sound like she was half-singing the words.
“The proximity of the Broghite forces makes it uncertain that we can collect on your debt,” the plant-being said.
Nero licked his lips.
The being is an Urok. They are, on the whole, a slave race of the Orgnan Empire but a few have managed to make it into Confederate space and are free. This one is clearly one of the latter category. They communicate with combinations of pheromones that function as syllables. The device on the desk is a chemo-audio translator.
“You will accept my credit,” Nero stated with grim finality.
“This port will not,” the box said.
“We can arrest you,” Khepria said.
“You can, but none of the local jailers will hold me on your behalf,” the Urok responded through its translator box.
“Then I’ll hold you on my ship, and take you back to Kosfanter in chains when I’m done here.”
A long silence followed his words. Nero and Khepria exchanged looks. Her ears had calmed down somewhat, but were still vibrating with her agitation. He couldn’t blame her for showing it. His own body was vibrating a bit too, as he struggled to contain his anger. Not even the barons defied him so blatantly as this clerk-plant was doing.
Urok, Prospero corrected.
“Let me rage in peace,” Nero whispered through clenched teeth.
“That must have been a mistranslation, could you repeat please?” the Urok asked.
“No,” he shouted back with such sharpness that Khepria jumped in place.
“I shall contact the local administrator, please wait here until we have a resolution to this issue. The benches are placed for your convenience,” the Urok said.
He stared at its glossy white eye-stalk. After several moments he felt a bit silly, and decided he didn’t care for trying to stare down plants.
“Fine.” He turned on his heel and made for the benches.
That is a remarkably civil response for you. I was expecting you to shoot the poor thing.
“We just got here, give it time.” He growled.
Khepria sat down beside him, allowing several centimeters between them. He assumed it was to give him space to fume. The thought of that calmed him somewhat. She didn’t deserve the effects of his ire.
“Sorry,” he muttered.
Her eyes returned to normal when her implants detected the lower light levels within the customs house. She looked at him with her large. amber eyes and cocked an ear to the side.
“I’m sorry? For what?”
He pressed his lips together, wondering if explaining it would matter. “Never mind,” he muttered.
“It’s slow and dated, but I could hack the system; tell it to clear us,” her words appeared in his field of vision. They’d worked out that this was more comfortable for him than having her voice in his head on the trip to Elmorus. They were at a disadvantage if they couldn’t communicate silently in the field, so this was a compromise he could live with.
I recommend giving this some time. If we can legally get past customs it would be better.
“We can legally get past, it’s the port master making it difficult,” Khepria responded.
“The plant does not want us on Elmorus,” he said aloud.
Her eyes dashed between him and the port master and back again. Her ears twitched and her breathing sped up.
The port master gave no response.
“I’m surprised you haven’t encountered an Urok before.” Her voice was a few decibels below her normal volume.
“Why’s that?”
“I thought all Abyssians were well traveled. I didn’t think there’d be a species you didn’t know about, at least in this area of space,” she said.
He chuckled. “I guess we give that impression. I’ve been around a bit, but the only contact I’ve had with the Orgnan Empire was on Savorcha during the war. I don’t remember them having any plant-warriors with them at the time.”
“I wouldn’t know. I was still at the CSA academy at the time. We studied that conflict, though. We had to in basic tactics class.” She looked off to the side for a moment. “I don’t remember your name in the records.”
“Why would it be?” He saw no reason for history to remember him. He was just an Abyssian doing a job. He hadn’t accomplished anything in his decades of existence. Catching criminals and leading troop squads didn’t get one’s name in the history records.
“Because Abyssians are fairly rare and the presence of one tends to cause a stir. The records indicated only one was sent to Savorcha to be Daedalus’ representative in the conflict, Praetor Marcus Modulus.”
Daedalus often sends his agents into conflicts covertly, Prospero interjected.
She tilted her head back. “I guess that would be why you weren’t mentioned.”
“Cheated of glory again,” Nero said without mirth. He remembered seeing Praetor Modulus only a handful of times while he was on Savorcha. None of his memories included working directly with his fellow Praetor.
Khepria put her hand on his shoulder. He could feel her fingers curl around the muscle through his uniform. Their touch felt warm, t
hough he shouldn’t have been able to feel heat through the layers of polymer fabric.
You were there covertly. Daedalus didn’t want your presence known publically. Remember, everything having to do with Doctor Rega and his research was need-to-know only.
“Right,” he said to Prospero.
It was strange that he didn’t have a specific memory of being on a covert mission, though his recall was fallible, and Prospero’s was not. He supposed that his machine companion must be right.
By the time he turned his attention back to Khepria, she had removed her hand from his shoulder. It felt strangely cold for a moment.
The Urok’s translator clicked. “Praetor Graves, the administrator informs me that your bill has been paid. You are free to depart at your leisure. I do not recommend entering the wilderness without a guide. The native fauna and some of the flora can be hazardous to sentient life.”
He rose to his feet. “Someone paid our bill?”
“I am not at liberty to discuss such matters, and do not have such information even if I was. Have a good day, and thank you for choosing Sanakrat Starport.”
I know what you’re thinking, Nero. I don’t think either of us will have much luck tracing down our mysterious benefactor. The local network is far too unregulated. It’s a backwater, decentralized system, not the civilized Cyberweb we’re used to.
He looked at Khepria.
“I’ll give it a shot,” she said.
The actual city—if it could be called that—of Sanakrat was three-kilometers from the spaceport. Barely twenty kilometers across, it sat in the midst of a vast sea of black-leafed trees like an angry red-brown sore in the flesh of some gigantic, furry beast. The contrast was more pronounced by the blood-and-fire light of sunset.
“I don’t think there’s a structure over five decameters tall.” Khepria had her button like nose practically pressed against the polyglass of the air-car’s canopy.
The tallest structure among the predominantly octagonal brick buildings below them was the narrow black spike of the local communications tower in the center of the settlement. Nero couldn’t believe this was the planet’s capital city. Most of the roads he could see hadn’t even been paved.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve been on the frontier, and I don’t think I’ve ever been to a place so unsettled before.”
I don’t think that your use of the word “unsettled” was correct here, Nero.
“Shut up,” he muttered.
“You should stop teasing him, Prospero. You know what he meant,” Khepria said, reminding him she was still linked with his SCC.
“Thank you,” he said. Finally, someone who could see his AI’s stupidity besides himself.
Stupidity? My IQ dwarf’s yours by several orders of magnitude.
“There are many types of intelligence,” Khepria said with a smile.
And Nero lacks them all.
She snorted in her attempt to stop a laugh from bubbling up.
Nero rolled his eyes.
He performed one loop around the city, seeking a place to set the air-car down, then headed for a crowded parking lot behind a large, elongated octagonal building that bore a close resemblance to a fortified wall. The lot was far from ideal, but the nearest thing to an air-car park that he could see.
He set his car down among the rest, most of which looked to be the flashy-yet-still-utilitarian models that mercs favored. A few even had weapons mounted on them that were illegal in civilized Confederate space. He made a “tsking” sound upon spying a fully automatic repeating plasma cannon mounted on one of the larger vehicles.
He and Agent Khepria climbed out of the car. The atmosphere in town was still musty, still heavily laden with the clinging gray dust, but had additional odors in it that the spaceport didn’t. The smell of meat and vegetables cooking somewhere, along with a whiff of sewer and wet brick, mingled in his nostrils. Prospero tore the scents apart into their individual chemical make-ups, but it was unnecessary. Nero knew the smells of home cooked fare. They stirred feelings within him he could not explain, and distant memories that he knew were there but which were as hard to hold as wet ice.
The long building before them was three decameters tall and held several storefronts on its ground floor. At one end a club of some sort blasted out heavy electronic music. It had a large hologram dancing in the air above its wide metal door as though it were an actual cloth flag declaring the place “The Wall” in neon green light. A stocky Achinoi male with a flat face, dark scales, and a Mohawk of quills tipped in pink luminescent ink, sat on a tall stool checking the identity chips of patrons on line with a hand scanner below the sign.
Further down the structure were a hardware store, a barber shop, and a small grocer all with darkened storefronts. At the terminal end a pale blue light glowed from a hexagonal window. The writing on the polyglass surface was in Cleebian symbols, but Prospero quickly translated them to read “Uroxin’s Noodle Shop.”
“Cleebian noodles, mmm.” Khepria’s ears danced happily above her head. “Have you had them before, Nero?”
“Not that I can remember, but we’re here to secure lodgings and some supplies for finding that facility tomorrow. Seeing as though neither it nor the temple Irin mentioned scanned from orbit, we could be in for a long hike,” he responded.
She glanced at the grocer. “It’s worth the distraction, I promise.”
He replicated her glance at the closed grocer. They wouldn’t be buying supplies tonight. He would have preferred to head out into the woods as soon as they got released from the customs house, but it would have been unwise to go bumbling around at night on a strange planet with hostile fauna. After the trip from Kosfanter, Khepria suggested that they stay in a local hotel for the night before heading out. It would give them a chance to take in the local color and get a feel for anything going on——which could prove useful information during their stay on Elmorus. Having noodles was not part of the plan. On the other hand, he was a bit hungry and he hadn’t seen Agent Khepria this excited about food before.
“Alright, I’ll give it a shot,” he said.
He took a quick glance in the window before leading the way through the door into the restaurant. Most of the sparse clientele were spindly Cleebians with large, fish-like eyes and flesh-corded beards connecting their chins with their clavicles. There were a few Solans and an Achinoi male in the back, as well.
The walls were curved as though the place had been built by cutting a tube lengthwise and dropping it arch-up on the street. They were decorated with the images of leaves from Cleebian plants painted in gold on a sky-blue background. Hovering holographic blue spheres combined with the light coming in from the window, casting blue-and-orange shadows around every object. It tinted the noodles the clientele were eating an woody shade of brown.
A podium in the front of the establishment partially blocked the way into the dining area. It was manned by a Cleebian with off-white skin dressed in a loose fitting gray robe that showed just enough curve in its chest region to identify it as female. Her three, fist-sized-yellow eyes rotated to take in the new guests. She pressed the small lips of her mouth just above the beard together and jutted her chin out in preparation for speech.
“Welcome to Uroxin’s, will it be two for dinner?” The fleshy cords of her beard vibrated out each word in buzz-accented Solan.
At Nero’s nod, she led them to a table near the center of the dining area. He sat facing the doorway, while Khepria took the seat with her back to it. The Cleebian hostess took their order, he let Khepria name the dishes, then disappeared into the back through a swinging door.
“It smells interesting,” he said.
Khepria looked suddenly nervous. “You should like it, everyone I know does.”
He glanced around at the patrons slurping up their food with an odd utensil. It was made from two metal sticks joined with a hinge at one end. One of the opposite ends forked into two prongs while the other was shaped like a hooke
d beak.
“What is that?” He asked.
Khepria followed his gaze then smiled. “Sakari, it’s a Cleebian eating utensil. They’re quite useful.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
“You won’t try it?”
He gave the device another glance. “Maybe. What do these things taste like?”
Her amber eyes looked up at the ceiling for several moments before she answered. “Less sweet than a lot of Solan food I’ve had, but they have a tangy taste that satisfies well.”
“Interesting,” he said.
Agent Khepria is right. Most sentient beings capable of digesting complex carbohydrates review these noodles well on the local forums, Prospero said.
Nero hoped he would agree with them. He didn’t want to get into an uncomfortable position with Agent Khepria.
It wasn’t long before two bowls full to the brim with gray noodles in a thick, white sauce arrived. The smell that drifted up to his nostrils was less than what he would consider savory, but Prospero assured him that no detectable chemicals in it were toxic. He watched Khepria deftly manipulate the sakari and get a load of noodles tangled up in them and then into her mouth. He fumbled with the narrow device himself, and only managed half of what she had for a first mouthful. The chalky texture and bitter taste made him press his lips together to hide his reaction.
“You don’t like it,” she said.
“It’s... interesting. Definitely unique.” He forced the first mouthful down.
“Sorry.” She loaded her sakari up again and wolfed down another mouthful. “I guess they’re not for Abyssians.”
Nero picked at his bowl with the sakari for several moments before putting the device down. He could eat later. He wished he had been more ready for this affair before agreeing to eat here, but he supposed they didn’t really have a week to sit around waiting for him to achieve the necessary level of hunger. He decided it was better to talk than sit and stare at the mess of cooling noodles before him. It might help diminish some of Khepria’s obvious disappointment too. The pointed tips of her ears looked like they were starting to droop.
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