Mythellion III was a moon and tidally locked. The sun beat down on one side for all hours of the day, save for once every forty hours when, for a brief moment, the Gas giant Mythel cut between it and the sun, offering shade and cold to the entire planet.

This, of course, meant the inverse was true for the rest of the moon, locked in eternal nighttime, only ever guided by the stars above, and lately, the space station orbiting the moon.

Most of the Ottinio lived in the band between, constantly watching the Sunrise or Sunset as their system’s star peaked over the horizon. The rest of the Ottinio lived under the massive ice floes that faced away from the sun, a sea of constant snowfall.

Land was scarce on the planet. Ottinio could breathe underwater for hours and only needed to surface to sleep, but their society had sprouted on the archipelagos and riverscarred islands. It was easier to build something up when you weren’t dealing with crushing ocean currents.

The Commerce Port was built on the edge of Ottinio’s tundra just past the line where the Sun set for good, and midnight stretched for hundreds of miles. Nobody had wanted to force themselves onto ‘prime real estate’ on the planet, so they’d settled in the dark.

From what I saw, there was more than enough open ocean past the day-line to have a Commerce Port somewhat close to society. Then again, I was behind on my Ottinio sensitivity training. According to Dvall, maybe the suntouched lands were sacred to them.

That would make sense, wouldn’t it?

As it had turned out my plan to rent a vehicle to get to our gunrunner wasn’t going to work. None of the watercraft for rent allowed you to head that far into society. The Ottinio might have been in the process of integration, but there were parts of the planet people weren’t supposed to touch.

Of course, that was where we needed to go, the Black Market doesn’t run with a storefront and a sign afterall

That was what had brought us to a small ice floe, several kilometers away and just outside of a space called ‘plausible deniability.’ On top of the floe, several, somewhat sketchy looking old planes were waiting, with a small crowd of Ottinio parked to the left of them, sitting in a circle.

I let off the throttle of the boat we’d rented as some of them looked over to us then went back to their conversation, we wouldn’t be close enough to talk to for a minute anyway.

“Those are the planes you mentioned?” Victoria asked.

“Apparently,” I answered.

“Do they even fly?”

“I’ve seen similar ones in museums,” I motioned in the vague direction of the planes as we were still too far to point at something specific. “That propeller on the front.”

“There’s only one,” Victoria countered, “and those wings are made of fabric.”

“Hey it flies.”

“Can we not?” Victoria asked, “we can try and take the boat out there.”

“Soon as we bring this thing more than 10 kilometers away from the Commerce Port it’ll turn off until we turn around.”

I watched Victoria instead of the sea for a moment as several emotions flashed over her face as she had half a dozen more questions and then answered them herself. Once it had been long enough that the previous topic was obviously dead she spoke up, “It’s cold.”

“Yep,” I agreed as the boat finally got into shouting range of the ice floe. One of the Ottinio stood up, their tail slapping against the ice and a jacket wrapped tightly around their bulging frame. I wasn’t sure what the jacket was made of, but it was certainly something organic. I waved. There were few things as universal as ‘raise a limb to say hello’ in the Galaxy.

“Hello friends!” the Ottinio called, it didn’t seem like they were shouting, Ottinio were just loud, “welcome, welcome.”

“Hi,” I answered, letting the boat park itself against the floe, a metal spike shooting out the side to anchor it. “We’re looking for-”

“Pardon friend,” the Ottinio cut in, now having almost walked to the edge of the floe. “Us out here, we do not have translators like your species do. I can’t understand your strange clicks.”

“I don’t click. I speak,” I whispered to Victoria, she nodded.

“If you want we can write things down, friends,” the Ottinio continued. “I have a map. I can show you places and you can point to where you would like to visit.”

That would probably be fine but- Honestly I needed to ensure that this Ottinio was going to be okay with us breaking the law, that and we needed to bring guns onto his plane. We needed to have a conversation.

I turned to the Ottinio and held up a finger, though I didn’t know if that translated, then I motioned between Victoria and myself.

“Yes I can take both of you, your species are small and light for my plane. Very safe.”

I cocked my head at the last part, nobody who had a safe plane needed to remind you that it was a safe plane. Then I sighed, clearly signing that I needed to talk to Victoria didn’t translate, so I just faced her and started instead. “We should talk to him.”

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

“It would help,” Victoria agreed.

“Give him your PA.”

There weren’t really seasons on Mythellion, but that didn’t stop the Winter wind from blustering between us during the silence.

“What?” Victoria finally asked.

“He needs a translator.”

“Give him yours,” she protested.

“I can’t give him mine, I have all the maps and our contact’s info.”

“Shouldn’t the pilot have the map?” she suggested, crossing her arms. I didn’t know if she’d picked that up from me or it was an eerily similar gesture between humans and Fotuans. “I think he should have yours.”

“You wanna explain that we’re taking guns onto his plane?” I asked.

That got her to pause for a moment. Victoria looked at the plane and then back out to sea. I wasn’t sure what convinced her, my argument, or just wanting this plane ride to be over with. “Fine,” she hissed, reaching into the side of her hair that wasn’t shaved close and pulling out a small silver dime.

“Fancy,” I commented.

“I just took out my translator,” she pointed out, placing the small dime in my hand. “Your voice is different.”

“I’ll have to ask you about it,” I said as I turned away from Victoria and stepped off the boat with her PA in my hand. As I brought it over to the Ottinio I stared down at it, all of the human-made devices worked off of watches, phones or other antique technologies that were part of human culture. Victoria was also wearing a device aside from this, but if this was a computer.

Well, you had to hand it to Fotuans, their designers knew how to keep things minimalist.

I placed the metal dime in the Ottinio’s flipper-like fingers and pointed to the space just behind my ear with my free hand.

The Ottino looked down at the PA, and then back to me. They moved their entire head to look around. Now that I was properly close, it was also clear that they didn’t have pupils. “What is this?”

I grabbed the PA back and reached around to place it on their neck myself. There was a chance that they would jump at it, but instead they let me apply the device. Clearly not their first time dealing with Alien technology. “Can you understand me now?” I asked.

It was hard to gather what surprise was with different species, but the Ottinio’s jaw hung open for a moment, revealing row after row of razor teeth. “That is wondrous, friend.”

“Kingston,” I introduced, “she’s Victoria.”

“Friend Kingston the human and Friend Victoria the Fotuan,” they motioned toward her and Victoria shook her head at me.

“You’re using her translator,” I explained, “she can’t understand you.”

“That is very, very generous of her,” they said, pushing past me to offer Victoria a hand out of the boat. As the Ottinio grabbed her hand, he shook it from side to side, passing it between their flippers. “Thank you, thank you.”

“Thank you,” I reiterated to Victoria, even though it wouldn’t help.

“I think you’re welcome.” Victoria responded. Good guess.

“Now,” the Ottinio turned back to me, “to business, Friend. “My name is Musc, if you would have me today I will be your pilot.”

“That’s the intent,” I explained. “I have to get to an Ottinio outside of the Commerce Port area.” I turned my wrist to the floor and it projected a map of the area onto the snow-covered ice. “It’s the highlighted point there.”

“Ah! You want to go see Yinde,” Musc affirmed.

“You know them?”

“He’s a bastard,” Musc said, “but very good for business. I don’t love the idea of Alien guns near my hometown but-” Musc ended their sentence by slamming their tail twice. I imagined it was similar to a shrug.

I didn’t comment on the fact that he was enabling it.

“Now I know what you’re thinking, friend Kingston,” Musc continued, waving me over to one of the planes. “Why are you flying me there if you don’t like it?” Victoria followed after a moment, keeping her head low and avoiding the gaze of the other Ottinio that were clearly waiting for clients. “The answer is simple. If someone is going to get the money from getting Alien guns on the planet, it might as well be me.”

“Fair point,” I said as we reached the plane that was the closest to the edge of the floe. Each of the seats was large enough to hold about three of me, or, I imagined, one hefty Ottinio. “If it makes you feel better, we’re taking guns off planet.”

“Ah the money is always going to bring guns,” they said, “I’ve accepted it. My daughter told me that I needed to buy some but-” Musc grabbed a cord that was dangling from the nose of the aircraft, it went all the way into a small hole cut in the ice. “That was too much for me, so I fly people around.”

“Speaking of money,” I started.

“Ah, the trip there and back will be one thousand.” Musc heaved on the cord and started pulling it out of the water.

“How would you like me to pay?” I asked. Musc was almost certainly under-charging there, but I wasn't about to explain that. Maybe I’d tell him at the end of the trip instead of giving him a tip.

“One moment,” the Musc grunted as he pulled one last length of cord and fished a small tidal engine out of the water. He wasn’t looking but I nodded at the technology. Certainly beat what humans were using back when planes had fabric on them. The Ottinio grunted again as he dropped the engine onto the ice and started disconnecting the cord on the front of the plane.

Once he had removed the cord and tossed it to the side, he started fishing in his jacket and pulled out a small silver data storage unit. “You can put the money on here and I can get it later.”

“Galactic is fine?” I asked.

“Of course, our currency is going to be useless soon, Friend.”

“This is bullshit.” Victoria hissed, taking her place beside me.

“Pardon the Fotuan,” I offered to Musc.

“I understand that you’re talking about me,” Victoria pointed out. That was fair, I didn’t think Engish and Fotuan were close linguistically, but the word for their species would at least be based on how they said it.

Musc walked over to us and held out the dta drive to me. Once I’d paid he motioned over to the plane. “You can climb in.”

Victoria walked over to the plane before I did. There was enough context without speech there.

“A question,” I started.

“Yes friend?”

“Earlier, you called me human and Victoria a Fotuan.”

“Are you not?” Musc asked, “Sorry if-”

“No you’re right just,” I thought about how to word it, “most species that are physically different than us like the Ottinio,” I reached the edge of the plane and went to step up, “can’t tell us apart.”

“Well,” Musc paused to roll up the cord from earlier instead of leaving it haphazardly on the ice. “Tell me, Friend Kingston, were you around when the humans found other species?”

“No,” I answered.

“When I heard about you all,” he mentioned to Victoria and I with the hand that wasn’t currently choked by cord. “I knew that I would need to know all about you. I bought books, and I read. So I would know who I was talking to, and what they would need.”

“Smart,” I commented.

“Thank you, that is why when aliens come back to the planet they go ‘I want Musc’, because they respect that I know what I am talking about.” he says, “but sometimes I am mistaken. I thought I had read that Humans and Fotuans don’t like each other, but here you are.”

“Here we are,” I responded without refuting his earlier point.

“So, are you ready to go, friend Kingston? Musc will get you there safely.”

“Let’s fly.”