by S E Zbasnik
Taliesin pushed back onto his feet as Variel scurried out from beneath him, wiping any rising terror she may have felt in that nearish death moment off both their faces. With the door actually closed and no tentacle monsters coming to chew their faces off, Marek was able to get some semblance of sanity back, "What was...who keeps a monster like that on a space station?"
"It was not a monster, not in the children's fairytale sense," Taliesin said, picking up his dagger.
"Kraken," Variel said to her husband. "Probably an ambassador by how rudely it responded to a couple of people stumbling into its bedroom. Only a diplomat can get away with murdering four people on his doorstep."
"And this is normal out here, in space, where giant appetizers can kill whomever they like."
"To him we seem like oversized prawns, so yes," Variel admitted. She'd never thought much of the dangers in space. It was all just part of the job. And frankly, an enraged, oversized squid was nothing compared to the real horrors in dark space. Facing the possibility of no food, no light, and drawing straws to see who's the last corpse left to leave a message to anyone who finds their dead ship floating adrift millennia down the road was what ate at the back of her mind. A swim with krakens was commuter traffic by comparison.
"WEST?" she ordered into her PALM. "Do you think you could point us in the direction of a human capable non-dwarven Half 'n' Half?"
The computer thought about how wise it would be to push her after it'd just sent them into a life or death battle with the calamari. "Yes, I believe I can."
"Good," Variel paused as she waited for a response, "Could you get to that then?"
"Fine...computing now," WEST said, and flashed another set of rotating gears onto the wall. Variel slid down onto her butt, her hand propping up her head. This was going to take awhile.
The lift coasted to a gentle stop and the doors opened to not water, not a monster rampaging down a dark alley about to slash their throats out, and certainly not a five foot deep line to an amusement park restroom. Things were looking up. Marek glanced out at the subdued sounds of heels clacking against metal grates, soft voices muttering things about rhubarb, and a pair of humans running down the hallway to catch what could possibly be the last functioning lift on the entire station.
Entire shopping centers worth of bags hugged both their eyes, the skin on the woman a curious blend of greens and oranges painted with the skill of an impressionist suffering a severe head cold. If it weren't for the way she glared at anyone staring at her failed makeup job she'd have been taken for a false elf, playing the part by mixing her natural mahogany skin with bits of color and flattening the ears. Her companion hung back, guiding her as if she were about to snap and either cry or kill whatever got in her way. His hair was long on one side and burnt to the crispy ends on the other -- the flaxen tresses stunk of that putrefying charred hair smell. Their haunted eyes watched as every one of the landing party disembarked before them, then together they leaned onto the close door button without saying a word and vanished.
"Charming place," Orn remarked, having gotten over his hydrophobia now that his boots were on solid artificial gravity.
Variel led the charge, keeping Marek close enough in case he tried anything stupid, while the dwarf and assassin took up the back. Together, they exited out the lift lobby and paused. Craning their necks up, they watched a hovercraft with a string of train cars dangling behind it lazily loping around the air. This was a fairly normal sight for anywhere that kids or the easily bored would gather. What gave them pause was that it was upside down and no one seemed in a rush to solve that problem.
"How do you think it lands?" Orn asked, rotating his head upside down and following the erratic flight path with his fingers.
"I'd rather not stick around to find out," Variel muttered. "Okay, we have shopping, and where we have shopping we have..."
"Sticky floors!"
"Plastic foliage."
"An insane squid trying to kill us all?"
"Small rocks?"
"Forget I asked," Variel said shaking her head at the testosterone group behind her. Coffee shops were the natural habitats of intellectuals who'd gather to discuss how much more intelligent they were to everyone else around them while they also loaded their fraying pockets with all the sugar packets they could nick. Victor/Victoria's Secret, Pottery Colony, Stasis Sonic Shower & So Forth: each store was actually owned by the giant conglomerate company Etc. Inc and operated under dwarven jurisdiction. They let the humans keep their silly names since it entertained them so.
"Ah," Variel said, pointing to a neon sign flashing behind one of the water fountains running backwards.
"The Lion's Den," Orn read, squinting up his eyes and pretending he didn't see that floating wet stuff.
"One of those faux pretentious think tanks where people gather to talk about the best vids of the past millennia and who can recite the obscurest list of bands backwards. I had to hide in one for a few hours once. I kept jamming a bunch of consonants together getting everyone to nod their heads at how amazing they were."
"Brena has a club membership," Taliesin admitted, wishing he'd tried the captain's consonant idea.
"Where there's that level of smugness there's always a coffee shop, come on." Variel led them past a trio of teenage gargoyles, their wings barely carved, a stand offering to register your name on a grain of star dust, and blocked a small trio of candy dispensers with her body as she shooed Orn on.
When they passed the Lion's Den mascot, a large cat with a pair of pinching nose spectacles digging into its golden snout, the ground ground to a halt. Orn waved his hands over a chasm carved right into the floor. Not a bottomless hole one would expect in tourist traps, this one built out of the same wall and floor metal had lights running down the sides to illuminate the neck snapping fall below.
"Now what?" he said, gesturing to the wall on the other side and the noticeable lack of coffee anything.
Taliesin tilted his own shaggy head to the left, then the right. "Ah, I believe I have discovered the issue." Without testing his theory he jumped down the chasm.
Variel dashed to catch his sleeve, "What the hell are you--?"
But the assassin's body twisted 180 degrees and his boots landed upon the chasm's far wall, the man standing perpendicular to a long fall. He steadied his landing, re-situated his sleeves, and looked back/up/down at the others, "It is as I suspected, the gravitational field has been rotated."
At the sight of the assassin flying in midair, Orn choked on a lozenge in his mouth. Marek whacked him on the back and the half slobbered treat spun upon the confused G-forces, rotating freely in space. Its low mass was unable to overcome the barrier between chasm and floor. The dwarf coughed air back into his lungs while Marek poked at the floating sweet with his finger. It was enough of a push to send the candy skittering to the chasm where it skipped across Taliesin's boots.
"Right, okay," Variel steadied herself. Just like old Zero-G training when they flip the shuttle upside down. Tucking down a bit, she jumped off. Her knee hit the metal ceiling/floor and one of her hands reached out for nothing. The landing was nowhere near as graceful as the assassin's but she didn't break anything. Taliesin caught her reaching hand and helped her to her feet. She gazed into those mirrored eyes and wanted to tell him to never ever do that again. He'd almost given her a heart attack! Instead she waved to the others, "Come on, lets get going. I can see the shop from here."
Marek stepped away from the endless drop and waved to Orn, "Women and dwarves first."
Orn sized up the opening with his hands as if he were about to photograph it. Shrugging, he stepped back and gathering a running leap shouted "Gurnsback!"
Gravity wasn't certain what to make of the arms splayed dwarf at first, but it quickly flipped the man like a pancake and splatted him against the floor. Variel and Taliesin both jumped back as Orn's body bounced slightly against the metal grating. He rose from his colossal belly flop, the grating of the floor imprin
ted upon his face, and said, "Can we do that again?"
"When we leave," Variel muttered to her pilot rolling over onto his backside. As Taliesin offered the same hand to Orn, she shouted, "All right, Marek. Last one, let's go."
Marek hovered his head over the drop, all the blood rushing out of his face, probably from being so close to the gravitational overlap. Rotating g-forces could rip the veins out of through your pores if you weren't careful. His eyes were almost elven size in terror and he shook his head no.
"For fuck's sake, you don't want to do this? Fine. We'll go back to the ship. I'm not doing this for my health, and you go home without a dime left to your name. You'll have to get a real job where you wake up before noon and wear khakis!"
Marek growled at his wife, but dropped to his knees. Inching forward like a babe figuring out how to get from point A to point B, he crawled towards the chasm.
"Oh dear gods," Variel muttered at the overt caution of her husband.
"I could pull him down if you'd prefer?" Taliesin offered.
"I'd pay to see that," Orn added.
Finally, Marek's hefty body became too much for his slow crawl and the hand of gravity scooped him up. He gurgled as his insides inverted themselves and flipped the silver slither upside down before shoving down hard upon his back. The knees crashed into the metal then his hands, dicing into tender flesh that hadn't done a hard days work since he learned how to run from it.
Variel sighed, but lowered her calloused hand to his. His head raised and he looked into her amused brown eyes, "I despise space and everything in it!"
She grabbed his forearm and took the weight upon herself. As she him up, lifted his torso came into contact with hers. Variel in turn glared into his scattered eyes, even greener in his terror and said, "Good, because it hates you as well. Come on, we have coffee to grab."
"That'll be one cup of slug juice with extra slime."
"Decaf?"
"Ancestors no."
Marek puffed out his cheeks, tapped his wrist as if he'd ever worn a watch there, and then stomped his foot. The line to the only functioning drink dispenser within a five mile radius was a tiny bit out the door and around the corner. It almost reached the gravity well, but a few people weren't paying attention and slipped down it. Their loss got the party a few steps closer at least.
Variel shook her head at her husband who threw a shit fit as they approached the sign, the second Half done in a gear motif and the words "Cyber Emporium" scrawled beneath. He'd jump at the slightest sound of machinery whirring up, waving his hands around as if defending himself from the march of the robotic killer soldiers. The kindly dwarven couple in front of them only inched closer together by his third overreaction to the steam machine kicking on.
"What in the hell is your problem?" Variel whispered into his ear.
"This isn't right, man was not meant to play god."
"Did you read that off a napkin somewhere?"
Marek leaned into the artisanal shelf crammed with coffee mugs designed for various sized hands and finger numbers, sending two wobbling onto the floor. The rubber one bounced, but the other shattered upon the ground, glittering shards of black diamond porcelain coating the linoleum. He paused in his rampage -- about to point a finger at the kindly dwarven couple -- when a shorter cyborg, about goblin sized with a hefty broom inserted into its robotic grip, smiled at the human and said, "THESE THINGS HAPPEN."
It bent to sweep up the shards, paying no mind to the human shrinking away from it as if the cyborg had metal rot. Variel shook her head again.
As the goblin-org stood, the dust pushed inside its chest cavity for later recycling, Variel told it a very loud, "Thanks," while glaring at her husband. He shrugged his shoulders and leaned back, almost knocking into another cup. Her hand grabbed onto his elbow, holding him steady as the goblin-org eyed him up once before returning to its duties behind the counter. "I can't take you anywhere, can I?"
Marek threw her arm off and adjusted his shirt, "Me? What did I do?"
"Acting like a virgin on this space walk isn't enough? Why don't you try gawping at the oxygen station or having your photo taken with one of the security golems. Those were always popular with star tourists."
He leaned into his wife and hissed, "I wouldn't have left the safety of the ground if it weren't for you springing back to life. So, unless you want me to shout that fact to all these nice 'people'..." he let the threat hang because he had no idea how to end it.
Variel threw her hands up and leaned away from him, not wanting to engage with the ass anymore than was necessary. As she did, a complimentary bot entered into their space. Its eyes whirred, the apertures cinching tight, as it tried to get them into focus, "Pardon me. Due to the wait of the line I am wondering if you'd like to try one of our new blends?"
"Whatcha got?" Variel asked, grateful to be talking to anyone that wasn't her husband.
"Sunshine Dreams and Ladybug Vomit," the bot answered, tilting its bucket like head to the side to sway with some internal mechanism or because it had the music in it.
"I think I'll stick with the Sunshine Dreams."
"Excellent choice," the bot said, as it did with every choice, and pushed open its own chest painted with a frilly apron design. It filled a single tiny cup and handed it over to Variel.
Horrified wouldn't begin to describe the look of utter contempt on Marek's face, "You're not going to drink that, are you?"
"Why not?"
"It came out of some robot's guts," he screeched.
She downed it all in one gulp, and despite the clawing burn of sunshine in the form of a spicy pepper sauce, she grinned as she gave the complimentary bot her spare cup. As it hovered to whoever waited behind them, she glared at her husband, "You can embarrass your ass all you want on your own time."
"Embarrass? Who's embarrassed?"
She crushed her hand into her forehead, trying to pinch the bridge of her nose until she was somewhere else. "Just, go sit with Orn and Taliesin. I'll get all the drinks myself."
Marek eyed up the menu so vast they provided complimentary binoculars at the front so patrons could make out the tiny text. But he knew when that vein in her forehead started to vibrate it was time to make an exit. "Very well, get me something without dairy. I'm trying a new diet."
"I bet you are," Variel muttered as her husband broke from the line.
Orn and Taliesin staked out the last table left in the place. The dwarf had his feet propped up on one chair as the assassin sat perfectly content within his means. Orn tetched and gestured he should do the same but Taliesin refused; placing ones socks upon furniture was a sign of disrespect. Elves didn't trust socks and their filthy habits.
"Suit yourself," the dwarf muttered, glancing around at the patronage. The decor was mildly obnoxious, a few zany paintings of coffee --what else-- and its various paraphernalia done in brutish colors graced the walls. An oversized, hollow gear made out of plastic was half sunk into the floor and claimed a good table and a half space, all the better to create the illusion of a crowd even as people wrapped their fists in barbed wire to fight for a chair.
Another hand reached out for their table's spare and Taliesin jumped up, "I am sorry, we require that."
"Oh, right, fine," the chair thief muttered, before hunting out new prey.
"I'm telling you...what was it your sister calls you?"
"Sin," he said without a trace of irony. In the Dulcen tongue it was nothing more than a pleasing series of letters.
"Riight, that's not in anyway creepy by the way, for your flesh and blood to call you Sin." Orn had mostly given up on his incest theory, preferring to 'ship the lusty but slightly bonkers Brena with their slightly bonkers and musty captain. It was one he had difficult getting to take hold for some reason, "Tell me, what are you really doing here?"
Taliesin paused as he wrestled the spare chair away from another woman, this one a ghoul whose robe kicked off plumes of neutralizing baking soda as she gave up on overpowe
ring the elf, "Beg pardon?"
"You never come on these things. You and that sister of yours are off playing dance and murder together while Cap and I do the dirty stuff. And you don't get much dirtier than today."
The elf damped down the panic rising beneath his skin. If he said the wrong word, let loose the wrong phrase, got the dwarf even vaguely on the scent that he and Variel were more than just landlord and renter he need not worry about what the captain would do to him, Brena'd take care of it first. "I...needed to stretch my legs."
"Wha?"
"To get away from all the...women on the ship," Taliesin grinned at the end -- a pale imitation of a smirk, but he wasn't the actor of the family.
But Orn laughed at that and slugged him on the shoulder, "I hear that!"
The moment of male bonding broke as Marek sat his voluptuous ass down in the chair Taliesin guarded. Orn pulled a lolly out of his pocket and unwrapped it slowly as he glanced towards the human, "Truth be told, Sin, I was kinda hoping you had a contract you needed to finish." He stuck the end into his mouth and gave a knowing nod to the elf.
Which would have probably meant something to him if the most the elf and dwarf ever discussed wasn't only the location of the lavatory paper, "I...why would I have to accomplish a contract here?"
"You know, one of your assassin contracts," Orn emphasized it by stabbing at the air with his sucker.
"Um..."
"If you're trying to scare me into running away with my tail between my legs, you're gonna need something better than that," Marek said, tipping back his stolen chair.
"You seemed to be doing a fair bit of that in the lift," Taliesin said, surprising himself. He was non-confrontational by nature, unless money was being forwarded into his account, but the human ruffled his skin.
"All right, Sin!" Orn said, holding his hand up for a high five. The elf blinked slowly but lightly tapped his fingers against the dwarf's thick glove.
Marek puckered his lips and glanced back towards his wife still standing in line, "Is this jealousy I detect?"