The outpost was a run-down place, worn by years of wind and rain. Most of the buildings had seemingly been put up in haste, with the plan to eventually make them into proper houses and facilities. When the planetary grading became known, however, such an ‘eventually’ never came to pass.

Now, the rain pattered down upon tin roofs and muddy paths, and several of the walls around me looked as if they wouldn’t survive another week before the rot made them crumble. Rust had eaten its way through every chain-link fence as well, and in the places where the holes had become too large, sheets of wood had been put up to keep the wilderness at bay – sheets that’d become victim to the rain just as well as everything else.

The only buildings that had a semblance of structural soundness were a few scattered guard posts, the medical-facility-but-also-motel I’d just left behind, and the family-restaurant-turned-into-bar that now lay before me.

The paint on the sign was flaking, and one of the letters hung loose, revealing the old sign underneath. Mosé’s Bastaurant, it ended up saying.

At least the lights were on, and the sound of activity carried out into the rain, leaving it as one of the few places to seem alive within the outpost. There was someone moving down by the hangar as well, shining their flashlight over the ships that were docked out there on the boggy field.

They were too far away for my eyes to see what they were doing, and my attention lay upon the bastaurant before me anyway.

I’d been meaning to take a walk to clear my mind, but now, the smell of food and warmth seemed like a good reprieve from the heavy rain. It’d soaked me through and through, and lightning crackled in the distance.

I should’ve spent more time looking for some umbrella of sorts.

𐫰 𐫰 𐫰

The patrons of the old family restaurant, turned into a pub, seemed just as confused as the place itself. A few oldies were dancing by a hacky jukebox in the corner. The weathered thing would occasionally get stuck, receive a boot to the side, only to randomly switch to a new song.

It made for an irregular ambiance, and each time it happened, the gray-haired slug person that’d been swaying along to the beat would let out an upset gobble-gobble, before being forced to undulate in a new direction. The slow-dancing pair next to them seemed mostly human, if very wrinkly ones.

In another corner, one of the establishment’s tables had been dragged up against the wall. It’d been spread with random wares, and a sign that read Soon Back hung next to it. A middle aged woman was standing next to it, slowly tapping along her foot to the music and seeming bored to no end. She wore a heavy coat, had shark teeth, barely any neck, and was built like a 300lb wrestler.

There were also some guards playing chippers with a gang of rugged scrapers in a loud congregation of their own – cheers, curses, and laughs constantly announcing their presence; a quiet family with gills and extra eyes, most likely natives, having a quiet dinner in the corner; as well as a slimy – literally, the stuff was dripping from his wobbly cheeks – bartender that was having an argument with a, self-proclaimed, interstellar diplomat.

“I’m telling you, I can’t remain on this planet for another two weeks,” she insisted, her voice distorting through the gas-mask like contraption she wore over her face. From the way her hands moved, however, it was clear she was upset. “I need to leave tomorrow.”

“Wells, a sure shame’s that,” the bartender jollily clucked. “This planet ain’t care about stuffs like yous plans. Until them here storms settle down, ain’t nobody leaving.”

Even as he talked, he was forced to constantly wipe away his own drippings from the glass he was holding. It would begin filling up whenever he wasn’t paying attention, and now, he glanced down just in time for a fat glob to have landed inside.

“So, yous wanted it lemon or cherry flavored?” he asked, only for the diplomat woman to frustratedly turn around and storm off.

I could see her force-field umbrella flicker into effect as she moved past me, shielding her from the heavy rain outside.

With a shrug, the bartender’s eyes turned to me instead. “What can I do for yous? A drink, some food, or just shelter from the rain?”

For a second, I hesitated, and having seemingly misinterpreted my silence, the bartender picked up a screen from somewhere behind his counter. “Ah, I sees. You came with them other humans, didn’t yous?” He began tapping away at his device. “Let’s see here…Empyrian…Fidasi…Fugordi…”

“Terra-majoris is fine,” I said, finally making my way over.

Although my UI didn’t have any translation capabilities yet, I knew most of the galaxy’s common tongues well enough to speak in them. Majoris better even than my mother one. It was what they taught at the Academy.

“It’s just…I don’t have any credits to pay with,” I continued.

Although I’d sort of realized the problems having no funds would eventually pose, this was the first time in a long, long while that I actually felt it.

“I sees…” the bartender slowly began. “But yous were with thems Stratos Apolytos passing by, nos?” As I gave a short nod, he picked up another glass, filled it with some greenish liquid, and slid it over. “They paids for more kids than they had with them. Yous are covered.

“It’s just fruits and water,” he added as he saw my expression, smiling. “So, do yous prefer someone to talk to, or the quiet?”

“I…I’ll take the quiet for now,” I said, still needing time to sort out my thoughts.

Stolen novel; please report.

“Just let me know if yous change yous mind,” the bartender said, and with another shrug, he went back to wiping up his own slimy mess wherever it fell.

I took a cursory sip from the drink I’d been given. It really tasted like some tangy fruit juice, though, it did make me wonder how hard it would’ve been to get something stronger from the man. Dulling my thoughts for just a bit wouldn’t have been all bad. No, Yamien. You know how you get, and this is not the time…

With a sigh, I regretted that promise I’d made so long ago – not for the first time – as I kept sipping my juice and listening in to the room’s conversations. Mostly the group playing clippers, as they were the loudest.

I heard the scrappers complain about impossible bounties for fuck-all pay, a guard chiming in to joke about how they could go salvage the crashed carrier – “should make you a fortune, if you survive…” – laughter, and someone else warning how they’d get the Stratos Apolytos after them if they tried.

Within the year, some officially sanctioned party would come here to retrieve what they could, apparently. Though, more than one joke came in the vein of: “maybe nothing is left by then…” and more laughter.

I knew they weren’t serious.

Besides the more obvious flaws of messing with the Apolytos’ property – people had been killed for less –it was an option for the desperate at best, and not a very realistic one.

Poor as I was, I didn’t even consider it.

I’d need an upfront investment to even stand a realistic chance. Weapons, gear, ammunition, some basic mods…

Was life always this hard when you didn’t have any money? If I’m not going to the Academy, I’ll need a patron of my own. Someone who can—

The thought had barely crossed my mind as fate himself kicked in the door. Or more like, bumped it open with his hip, nearly tripped over his own feet as he staggered inside, and played it off with a charismatic laugh.

“Come one, come all!” he yelled out, pulling most gazes within the room. “The best wares in galaxy have just stumbled through your door!”

𐫰 𐫰 𐫰

He was a foxlike youth. Literally. A shaggy tail, pointy ears, and sideburns of white and bright orange put him in the range of a second gen kemonomimi. The features were too well integrated to be mere cosmetic mods, and his human characteristics screamed mixed genome as well. Parents of different origins, or a really talented surgeon…?

Even drenched by the rain, said features left him with a striking appearance, either way – golden eyes sweeping us all and teeth bared in a winning grin. “If you need waterproof socks, a premium back-scratcher, or something to entertain yourself with as the missus is off on her long-drawn star cruise, come to Mikayes, and he’s sure to have something for you!”

“He’s another traveler stucks beneath the storm,” the bartender whispered beside me, shaking his head as he wiped down another slimy spot from the counter. “Seems he’s been trying to make the mosts of it, but peddling wares to these folks won’t do him any good. He’s been trying since yesterday.”

Sure enough, it wasn’t long before one of the chippers-playing guards loudly grunted, “Pipe down, fur ball. We already know the garbage you’re trying to sell.”

There were several empty drinks on their table, and none of them seemed too pleased with the loud interruption to their game.

The foxlike-youth, Mikayes, must’ve noticed the bad signs just as well as I had, but he deliberately ignored them.

“Why pipe down when I can pipe up?” he smiled, pulling out a wrench and some plumbing from the box he carried with his one free hand. “Maybe pipe you up with some of the galaxy’s latest flushing systems? It comes with a two way stream, cleaning you inside and out after every toilet wrestle. Never will you have felt so fresh as when—”

The screech of a chair being pushed back cut him short.

“I told you to shut up, you fucking sham!” that same guard growled, and a glitch in the jukebox left us all to hear his next few words, “That damned toy you sold me yesterday sent a live feed to my wife back home!”

Perhaps having realized the quiet around him, the guard’s face turned beet-red. Mikayes, on the other hand, responded with a shrug. “Intimate moments are meant to be shared with those closest to us, no? But if you intended for your playtime to be secret, there’s a setting for—”

“You son of a bitch!”

The guard had barely made it halfway across the floor as a hand had grabbed hold of his shoulder, holding him back.

The middle aged woman from the Soon Back table had stepped in, and like a mother bear setting her cubs straight, she now scolded both men, “Let’s calm down, shall we? There’s no need for violence here.”

Her coat had been left behind, and besides revealing more of her robust physique, I could now see the tubes and cables that ran in and out of her arms like oversized veins. She had one mechanical eye, as well, and the non-standard UI on her wrist was a bulky thing, connecting directly to several ports in her spine.

Although frowned upon by many for being ‘ugly’, such obvious external grafts did allow for easier maintenance and upgrades. She was an enthusiast, favoring function over form. Not to be trifled with.

“Thank you, Jenna,” Mikayes said, still grinning. “I’ll leave this man be as soon as he’s apologized for calling me a son of a bitch. I’m a son of a vixen actually. We take those things very seriously back home.”

“You crazy bastard!”

Several more chairs scraped across the floor as the rest of the guards – all five of them – stood up as well. They’d seemingly misinterpreted the woman’s, Jenna’s, demeanor for a “let’s fight,” one rather than the “sit the fuck down,” it actually was.

In the corner, one of the elders had just managed to give the jukebox the right kind of kick, leaving a swingy tune about lost love to come on.

What followed wasn’t as much a brawl as a one sided beating.

When that first drunk guard managed to stagger over a table to meet her, Jenna greeted him with an iron fist. White steam hissed out of her venting tubes, and her grafts churned as she spun around, flinging the one man she’d been holding onto into another two coming her way.

She pulled them around, smacked them, and kept them down as if they’d been nothing more than unruly children. Just a glancing blow from her knuckles caused a chair to split in half, and had she been any less careful, Jenna would probably have ended up breaking over a dozen bones that evening.

By the end of it all, however, as the song finished to a drawn out note of longing, six guards lay groaning on the floor.

The scrappers hadn’t even bothered standing up to help the guards. They’d just kept laughing through the spectacle, cheering on with their own glasses raised high.

I, on the other hand, merely stared.

Not on Jenna, who’d just taken a seat to calmly begin recalibrating her grafts. Not at Mikayes, busy trying to sell painkillers to the groaning guards. At least I wasn’t staring at the foxlike youth himself. Ever since he’d pulled it out of his box, my eyes had remained fixated on the strange contraption in his hand.

Now, he alternated between using it as a neck scratcher, and a motivation stick as he tried to haggle for the right price with a bleeding man who could barely form a sentence through his swollen lips.

It was brownish in color, and its shape followed conventions only its creator could ever have understood. In one sense, it looked like a severed arm, in another, an oversized key.

What caused my pulse to beat in overdrive, however, wasn’t its strange shape. It was the familiarity of it all; those enigmatic inscriptions running through its surface.

It's too early, I thought. That first tomb won’t be opened for decades still…

How was there already an artifact in circulation?

My stomach twisted. Something had wanted me to be there, in that place, at that very moment. It was too much of a coincidence not to be the case.

Something had led me there, and the notion made me nauseous.

I thought I still had time.

¤&/”…

Lj╫ᶚ@...

̕ȁ÷Ǧ…

Error…

Error…