I lasted about three hours before the incessant scraping and shrieking carved a piece out of my sanity that I knew I wouldn’t easily get back. It was like standing under a rusty carnival rollercoaster as the horribly maintained car thundered overhead, but constant. Unending. Maddening.

How Jun and Keratily stayed sane I couldn’t fathom, but I took solace in seeing that Okeria was having an equally awful time. His head was either in his hands or raised to stare at the ceiling, his mutterings the only sounds that sometimes broke through the torturous din of our trawler’s travels.

“I wish I was deaf, not blind, so I wouldn’t have ta deal with this racket.” Okeria groaned, leaning over to cradle his head in his hands once again. “Is it just me, or is this a hundred times worse than before?”

“It’s not just you. There seems to be an abundance of debris on this path.” Keratily agreed. She let a small purple bag drop onto a metal target she’d placed on the table, then murmured in dissatisfaction as it mushed out from the bullseye. “I thought I was better at this.”

Jun smiled at Keratily’s frustration from the game they were playing, then dropped her own green bag. It knocked Keratily’s out of the bullseye completely, and somehow didn’t spread out any further. Keratily muttered something about beginner’s luck as she lined up her next drop, but Jun and her grandma had been playing for at least an hour at that point. Her beginner’s luck should definitely have run out.

“How much longer until we’re at the first layover?” I asked. If I had to endure a day or more of this horrible existence, I don’t know what I’d do. “We can’t be that far, right? Hazards aren’t usually that huge, and this trawler can’t be that slow.”

Okeria groaned and shook his head in his hands. “This isn’t just one hazard. It’s a whole lot of them connected ta one point. It’s why we’re going there in the first place, since Endra’s probably still waiting right outside the gates ta this one.”

“She certainly was, so I assume she will still be.” Keratily agreed. She pushed aside the target just as Jun was about to drop another bag, then turned her chair around so she was facing me. “The ‘switchports’ are a series of level twelve hazards that have appeared all over Staura controlled territory. Only Okeria, myself, and a few others know of their existence; we try to keep them a secret so that we don’t have territory disputes both inside and outside of the hazards for their existence.”

“Wouldn’t matter much anyway, since everyone’s so happy being weak and complacent these days.” Okeria muttered. “Throw away all the old and ex-soldiers, then go on a drowned rampage when you don’t have anyone to fight for you anymore.”

Okeria had to be referencing what had happened to Nia and that district in Rainbow Basin. If not her directly, then he had to have known someone else that had been fucked over by the bastards that had run the city back then.

“You’re the ‘grand warden’ of your city, so can’t you make people train a little?” I asked, but knew the answer the moment the question left my lips. Back on Earth, we called that conscription. And enforcing that when the old leaders had just royally fucked over all their soldiers, while also putting in policies codifying that fuckery, seemed like an impossibility.

“I’m the grand warden, not a tyrant. Also, I’m here with you, which shows just how important I really am in the day-to-day back in Rainbow Basin. I could disappear for years at a time, and unless something happens that drowns more than half of the city, they wouldn’t even notice.”

The more I heard about Staura society, the less I wanted to be a part of it. But if I described human society to Jun or Okeria, warts and all, they’d probably have a very similar reaction. Which meant I really had to find my people before assholes like the ones back on earth or from my old life could greedily scoop up every morsel of power they got their hands on.

Another shrieking rumble cut off my train of thought, and I clenched my teeth in frustration. It was very hard to be introspective when it sounded like the walls around you seemed to be moments away from exploding. “I need to get out of this room.” I decided, pushing myself to my feet and summoning my unassuming new weapon to my hands. “Keratily or Okeria, I need either of you to come protect me from whatever slyk is through that door. I don’t care which of you.”

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“Me! I’ll go with him!” Okeria cut in before Keratily could answer. He was on his feet, fully armored, and at the door less than a heartbeat later. “Keratily senior and junior, ya coming with us?”

Jun nodded and made to stand, but crystals pressed down on her shoulders at the snap of Keratily’s fingers. She grunted and struggled before sighing and giving up, looking down at the new game Keratily had placed between them.

“I think I’m stuck here with rootia for now. Have fun, I guess.” She said, defeated, and reached for a carved piece of stone. “If I’m still alive when you get back, it’s your turn to entertain rootia next Seb.”

“Or maybe Okeria could.” I suggested, and the squeak that came from the man’s throat told me that he would do everything in his power to prevent that. I could get a good chunk of crystallized slyk with that knowledge. “Well, see you whenever we get to the layover.”

“Or when the human here gets his legs torn off and needs Keratily ta stitch them back on.” Okeria said cheerily, summoning two silver and blue drones that shimmered and faded from view seconds after they appeared. “Either way, we’ll see ya in a couple of hours. Good luck, Juniper!”

“Mmh.” Jun grumbled and waved us off. Okeria took that as permission to shove the doors as hard as he could, slamming them against the wall on the other side and jumping through the threshold in one swift motion. I shrugged helplessly and saluted goodbye to Jun, then followed the grifter through before he shut the doors on me.

The first thing I noticed was just how differently this trawler was built compared to the one the loneswarm had called home. Whereas that one was grand and built like a sea-faring opera house, this one looked like a futuristic factory floor had been overtaken by oil. Conveyor belts wound through a room that was both open and claustrophobic thanks to the sheer volume of crap that filled it, with decrepit robotic arms and hydraulics collapsed over and next to the belts.

Oil didn’t coat absolutely everything in another difference from the loneswarm’s trawler. The conveyor belts were the only things that seemed to be completely overtaken; dripping the thick slyk oil down to the floor below and crawling up the decrepit robots like ivy up a brick wall. Everything was made of the same rock that the slyk infested, so there was a real chance that a lack of oil everywhere was actually a terrible sign that these slyks had better control over their bodies.

Okeria tapped me on the shoulder to draw my attention, then pointed at a single mass of stone that was on one of the highest conveyor belts. “See that stone there?”

I did, but it didn’t look that different from the slyks Keratily had crystallized for Jun and I to kill. “I do, but why?”

“Identify it. You’ll get a better idea of the sort of slyk we’re about ta fight from its description.”

I nodded and asked The End to identify the cluster of rocks, and had my answer after a few moments of silence.

//ANALYZING: COMPLETE.

//SPECIMEN IDENTIFIED: SLYK REMNANTS.

//An empty husk that was once a Slyk, drained of all oil by the tyrannical ruler of this trawler.

A slyk killing other slyk? Were all the others the slyk equivalent of prey, and this was the first predator I was about to deal with? “Are you going to keep this slyk a secret until we see it?” I asked, and much to my surprise, Okeria shook his head no.

“This one’s a little too dangerous ta keep ya in the dark. It’s a slyk signaleech, and its favorite food is electrical impulses. The same kind that keep us…” Okeria looked at me and paused, “Well, the kind that keeps me thinking and feeling. Don’t know if it’s the same for ya, since you’re human and all, but I’d recommend not letting the thing touch your armor. It’ll drain your battery something fierce, and do far worse ta ya if it somehow gets inside.”

The warning fell short due to Okeria’s delivery. It was closer to someone raving about their hobby than the dire warning it should’ve been. “Is this the one you use to make most of your gadgets?”

“Could be.” Okeria said with a shrug. “On a completely different note, I’ll give ya this thing’s core if ya promise ta let me have all its gooey insides. And most of the crunchy outsides.”

“I’m not really in a place to haggle here, since you’ll be the one doing most of the killing.” I pointed out, and it seemed like Okeria hadn’t considered that. I instantly regretted not accepting his offer right away. “Fine; you get the materials, and I get the cores. You don’t fight me on that, and I won’t try to lay claim to any of the materials.”

“Y’know, I really should stop treating ya like an equal. But there’s something about ya that just… makes me stop and think before I say anything.” Okeria muttered. “And it’s only getting worse the more I get ta know ya.”

“I have no idea why.” I drawled, rolling my eyes inside my helmet as Okeria tried to parse the idea of respect. Or maybe friendship, if the man was capable of that. “Since I don’t know how to fight this slyk, you should definitely go first.”

Okeria’s silence at my suggestion was slightly unnerving, but his eventual sigh and deflation brought a tear to my eye. I was truly getting to him for some reason, and it brought me far more joy than it should’ve.