by Troy Osgood
The vidscreen was showing some news from the inner core but it was on a station controlled by the Culkin Union so it was filtered but still broadcast in Tradelan, the common language of the galaxy. Filtered a lot. So is every station, everywhere. There are so many Unions, planetary governments, the Planetary Council and others controlling the news that you never get an unbiased report. But if you know how to read between the lines you can get a pretty good idea of the truth.
See all the galaxy has to offer.
Sighing, I took another swig of my ale. Technically it was not ale, not by the earth definition. But it was close to it, one of the closest I’d found. Some drink called gaurt from a planet called Uduy.
I kept one eye on the vid and one on the door, and I waited.
As an independent freighter, I take a job to one place and when I leave that place it means I usually need to leave with a job. That sends me to my next destination. That’s life. One planet, moon or asteroid, hop to another.
The problem with a rock like this one is finding a job when I leave.
The asteroid needs a lot of stuff but not a lot of stuff leaves. Ore, sure, lots of that. But the Union controls that. A guy like me needs to find something else.
CU145792 is so out of the way that it doesn’t even have a jobs board like the Inner Core worlds do. A centralized location where people looking to ship have a place to post what they need and people looking to do the shipping can find them. In some Inner Core worlds, the shipper never even meets the shippee and it’s handled through a third party.
The bartender, who doubled as the server in this place, a big lump of a Kern, had just dropped off my second glass when I saw my contact enter. He looked around the place with an air of disdain. Quickly finding me, he started making his way through the crowd. Tesk Un Lil was a Kry from the planet Kryot in the star system of the same name. One of the Inner Core systems. He’d done something to anger his superiors so had been banished here to the dredges of the galaxy. He represented the Kry on other worlds and rocks in the local area of Deep Space. We ran into each other a lot.
Lil had light brown skin, bright red eyes and perfectly combed and cut black hair. He wore expensive looking clothes. He worked hard to present an image, that of an Inner World businessman. Someone important.
He really wasn’t. He knew it. I knew it. Everyone here knew it.
Stopping at my table he looked down at the empty chair with a sigh. It was a dirty chair and Lil was in his full snob mode. He sat down, back straight and hands held above the table as if he didn’t want to touch it. He was laying it on pretty thick.
“Arek Lancer,” he said in near perfect Tradelan, not a hint of a Kryan accent. I mean the guy spoke it better than I did and it was my primary language. It was rare that I spoke english nowadays. “How are you?”
“Doing good,” I replied and pointed at my mug, offering him one. He shook his head and I held up one finger for the Kern to see. “You?”
“Business is looking up,” he replied finally settling his hands on the table. He pulled out a cloth first and wiped off a section, looking down at the surface with disgust. He held the cloth away from himself and shook it before disdainfully putting it back in his pocket.
He was lying. Business was not looking up.
Tesk Un Lil wanted back into the Inner Core. Badly. He constantly worked to get there, going after bigger and bigger deals to try to convince his people that he deserved to be in the Core. He was still stuck here, which meant business was just the same as it always was.
That was the big problem with Deep Space. Once you were stuck here, it was very hard to get out.
“You called me so I assume that means you are looking for work?” Lil asked. More of a statement than a question.
“That’s right. Just dropped off a shipment for Yunil. Need a shipment to head back out with.”
Lil leaned back but without actually touching the chair. He tapped his long fingers on the table. The Kern bartender brought my drink and dropped it on the table, spilling some of it. Without a word he took the empty, not even bothering to clean up the spill or apologize. I leaned back, actually touching the chair, and waited for Lil.
The Kry had excellent memories. Their minds were almost like computers. They could process a lot of information quickly and were very good at multitasking. They rarely had to write anything down or input it in a computer. This meant they rarely forgot anything.
Another reason Lil was having such a hard time getting back to the Core.
Right now he was going through all the various deals he had in place, what needed to go where and when. He was also factoring in which ones didn’t accept cargo from Terrans.
Yeah, fancy that, we’re not that well liked out here or anywhere in the galaxy for that matter.
I took a drink and watched the vidscreen well waiting on Lil.
“I have a couple crates that need to go to Dynuit,” he said finally. “No rush.”
Picturing the trip from here to there in my head I worked out the fuel calculations and the time factor.
“How much,” I asked knowing what the minimum would need to be.
“2,500 cred.”
“That’ll work,” I said holding out my hand. Minimum and a little bit extra.
I wanted to laugh as Lil awkwardly reached out and clasped mine. His face was priceless. Kry don’t like to touch or be touched, and Lil was worse than most of them. I made him shake my hand on every job we did. I thought it was funny. I doubt he did.
It’s the little things that make life fun.
*****
By the time I left the bar it was well past dark. Or would have been if the sun was visible inside this rock. Instead I knew it was late by the type of people that were out. Every planet is the same. Night comes and a different class of being comes with it.
CU145792 was no different. It’s surprising, but even on a rock this small with a tightly controlled workforce, there were still criminal gangs. Maybe not that surprising really.
As I made my way through the street and around the clusters of people, I kept a hand on my gun. I wore a low hanging holster on my right leg. It was strapped to the leg and my belt, a holdover from my old army days. As was the blaster itself. Hand on gun and the general “don’t mess with me” vibe I gave off kept people away from me.
I wouldn’t be able to leave the rock for a couple hours or even load Lil’s cargo until morning, or what counted as morning, so I had some time to kill. Time was relative. Each planet or system had its own day and night cycle. Could play havoc on a traveler as they always had to adapt to local time. Or they did what most of us pilots did, kept their own cycle. In other words, they kept odd hours.
There’s wasn’t much to do on the asteroid but I knew I could find a card game or something along those lines if I wanted to.
But I didn’t.
What I really wanted was to sleep.
Well I really did want to play cards, but money was tight and I didn’t have any to risk.
So sleep it was.
I was near the tunnel that led to the hangers when I heard the commotion behind me.
Turning, hand around the grip of my blaster, a military issued Sig Sauer T1700, I saw people being pushed aside. Something or someone running through them. I could see two tall figures near the back, coming closer, the ones pushing people out of the way by force or just their presence. I couldn’t see anything they could be chasing.
And then I felt something slam into me.
Something small, a foot or more shorter than me and much thinner, hit me. I almost fell but was able to keep my balance. It hadn’t hit hard but had momentum behind it. So short I had missed it when looking at the crowd.
I looked down at what hit me.
“What the hell,” I said.
It was a she.
A young girl.
A Thesan and she looked scared.
CHAPTER TWO
I looked down at her and she up at me with big ey
es that were on the verge of tears.
She wasn’t just scared, she was terrified, reaching out and holding onto my jacket. She looked over her shoulder at the two tall forms that were continuing to push their way through the gathering crowd, coming closer. People were coming out of shops and buildings to see what the commotion was.
I didn’t need this. I had stuff to do and places to be. It wasn’t my business.
“Dammit,” I said aloud as the girl looked up at me.
Thesan, they’re allies of us earth folks. Terrans is what the other races call us. From Terra, which is what they call earth. Thesans are one of the few allies we truly have out here.
And the girl was alone.
And young.
She was typical for her race and age. I placed her at mid teens, maybe on the low end. She was about five feet tall with gray and black fur. Thesans are covered with a light fur from head to toe, tufts at the wrists and ankles, and hair that goes down their back and connected to their bodies. Their ears are small and pointed and their eyes are bright yellow with green irises. She wore a nondescript set of worker’s coveralls that were too big. Probably meant to hide her form. Thesans tended to stand out. It was the long tail.
They looked like humanoid cats.
This one had a pleading look to her eyes. Like I was her only hope.
From the noise I knew whoever was chasing her had come to a stop in front of me. The crowd was murmuring and all footsteps had stopped around us. I looked up.
And cursed.
A Tiat.
Two of them. The one in front of me and another behind looking at the crowd which was quickly moving away. Staring them down.
I studied the one in front of me.
Tall, light blue skinned, cold purple eyes and white hair. Dressed in a perfectly fitting uniform, no creases, no stains, no blemishes. Rigid. About a foot taller than my six feet and thin. But not spindly. Still looked balanced and tough.
That’s the thing about Tiat. They may not look like much but don’t let it fool you. They’re tough bastards. Bones like steel, muscles and tendons like wire. They don’t look it, but they’re strong. I’m not a xenobiologist, don’t know why, just know that they are.
Tiat were the galaxy’s bullys. I tried to avoid the bastards as much as possible.
They were militaristic, their matriarchal empire spreading out and taking what they wanted. We had fought a war with them that in some places and ways was still ongoing. It’d been five years since I left the Earth Expeditionary Forces and it’d been that long since I’d been face to face with a Tiat.
Punching one is like hitting a wall. Getting punched by one is like getting hit by a hammer.
Been there, done that.
Not something I wanted to do today or any other day. Something I never wanted to do again in this lifetime.
But it appeared there would be no avoiding it.
The girl still clung to me but I managed to push her behind me, using my body as a shield.
I looked up at the Tiat standing five feet in front of me and tried to keep the second in sight. That one had shifted to my left so he could look around his friend. It helped me keep an eye on him but also helped keep me in his view.
Why were two Tiat chasing a Thesan? I thought there was a non-aggression pact between the two races? Just like the one between Terrans and Tiat. Which is violated on a regular basis. I’m sure the same was true of the Thesan and Tiat one. But how could that involved a young girl?
“Can I help you?” I asked, keeping my voice calm.
“Move human,” the Tiat said. A command, no room for anything but doing what the big guy said. His voice was firm, deep.
It occured to me that I didn’t know the score here. I could be stepping into the middle of something big and bad. The Tiat could have a legitimate reason to be chasing this Thesan. They could and I could also be the richest guy in the galaxy, which I’m not. Not even close.
I hate Tiat. I hate bullies.
I could feel the girl trembling against me.
There really was no choice.
I was probably going to regret this.
“Sorry, what did you say,” I said to the Tiat, watching his eyes.
Always watch the eyes. You can tell when they’re going to move by the eyes.
Sure enough, his eyes twitched and he took a couple steps towards me, reaching out with his arm. Giving the Thesan girl a light push backwards, I stepped forward and into the reach of the Tiat. He was bigger than me, longer reach than me, outweighed me because of his bone density and stronger than I was so he had lots of advantages.
But I had leverage.
I grabbed his reaching arm with mine, hooking mine around his. I pulled him down and twisted my body so my free shoulder was slammed into his chest. It hurt, like hitting a wall, but my shove had put the Tiat off balance. I leaned down, taking the weight of the Tiat on my shoulder. He fell forward, off his feet, and when I had the full weight and it was a lot of weight, I pushed forward. The Tiat fell to the ground. Hard. And I released its arm.
When I had moved the other Tiat had moved. The bastards were quick.
I glanced at him and ran to the girl. Poor thing was frozen in fright, watching it all. Granted it had only been a couple seconds but still. She grabbed for me and I took her hand. I had the urge to grab my blaster but there was no way I was opening up a firefight in the middle of The Oval.
We ran down the lighted hall towards the hanger. The walls were smooth, metal and curved to the ceiling. No exposed rock here. Bands of lights ran along the top, making the hallway the brightest thing in the asteroid. It was wide too, the only way to get cargo from the hanger and into the center of the rock.
People, aliens of all sorts, moved through the hall in both directions. They stopped to watch us run by. I could already hear the Tiat behind us. They moved fast.
I wished the hall was more crowded. We needed to lose them before we could make it to my ship. I didn’t want them getting a look at it or the registration codes painted on the hull.
Not long, the hall emptied out into the large hanger. A wide open space carved out of the rock with metal lining the walls and floor and rough rock ceiling. It was a couple hundred feet long and deep. I could see the far end open to the void of space. Just a magbarrier between us and the vacuum. Black background, white stars and other asteroids floating by.
The hanger was filled with ships of all shapes and sizes. CU145792 was limited in how many ships it could hold. The asteroid was only so big and most of it was used for the mines. The center of the docking bay was open, lines painted on the metal with running lights that would direct ships from the berths into the center where they could pass through the magbarrier and out into space. Because of its size, the traffic was tightly controlled.
Even if we made it to my ship unseen, we weren’t leaving until the scheduled time and that was a couple hours away still. We needed some place to hide now so the Tiat couldn’t follow us to my ship.
I wouldn’t have come this way in the first place but I’d already been heading this way when the girl bumped into me. There are plenty of places to hide back in the Oval, but not in the hanger. I knew the Tiat were right behind us but I took a couple seconds to look around and try to come up with something.
Ships lined the perimeter, the back wall where we were and the sides. Crates and other equipment between the ships. Maybe thirty ships total. Lots of crates. No good places to hide.
Think Arek, think.
I was already regretting doing this until I looked down at the Thesan. She looked up at me with those eyes and they spoke volumes. They said she believed in me. She gripped my hand tighter, but not from fear but reassurance.
Dammit.
I looked around the space, thinking harder.
There. I hoped.
I pulled the Thesan to the right, heading for a group of aliens two ships down. About four of them stood together, watching another two pushing a couple maglifters up
a ship’s boarding ramp. Crates were stacked near them, two on each maglift. We were running towards them and it had caught their attention. I could see a couple lowering hands to blasters strapped to their sides.
Different shades of green skin and blue hair, purple eyes and humanoid. The same size as Terrans, they wore neatly tailored and matching uniforms. One of the many trading consortiums. I didn’t know which one, I only knew their species.
Dyers.
I didn’t know much about them as a species or their world, the few that I knew were independents and not that connected to their people. Dyers had a very strict society. Very regimented and controlled. There were reasons for it, or so I had been told. Almost every aspect of their lives was controlled by the ruling government. Independents, like the ones I knew, were rare and considered an anomaly. What I did know is that no Dyer was a friend of the Tiat. The two races hated each other. It was only because the Dyer weren’t as strong as the Tiats that prevented them from going to war. The Tiat knew this and teased the Dyer with that knowledge.
I slowed, holding up my free hand, glancing behind me, trying to convey that I meant them no harm. The Thesan girl looked behind us, fear in her eyes. I knew it was genuine and the Dyers were picking up on it. They glanced at me and the girl, a couple looking behind us. I changed my angle so I would go past them and quickly turned to be behind them. One followed us with his eyes but the others were focused on the entrance to the hanger and the two Tiat that had now entered.
Looking both ways, the Tiat split up.
The Dyer that had been watching us looked to one of the others who was staring at the Tiat. Without looking towards us, he nodded. Another Dyer motioned to me and started walking to their ship. I followed, pulling the Thesan tighter to me. The Dyer adjusted his pace so he was between me and the approaching Tiat. One of the crewers pushing the maglifter stopped and moved so it was now blocking us. He kept the maglifter even with us as we walked up the ramp into the ship.
The hold of the Dyer’s ship was long, the full length of the vessel. It was an underneath hauler, meaning the hold was the bottom half with the rest of the ship’s functions above. This design allowed for a lot of cargo. Inside I saw lots of crates of various sizes organized throughout. The Dyer were mostly known for their efficiency and it showed. Their regimented lifestyles carried over to all aspects of their lives. The ship was clean, well maintained. The maglifter continued on and our Dyer escort led us to a storage closet against the wall.