---Scrap---
---Bzhort’s perspective---
I reach the four fingered hand of my shaggy, purple, lower right arm to my holo and pass it to my upper right, answering the call as I bring it to my ear.
“Xartham Station Security; May I enquire as to the nature o’ the disturbance?” I ask, the prim and proper words not a great fit for my (even for a Threndian) gruff, deep voice.
The high voiced Vekthian caller's translated speech sounds like words like ‘may’, ‘enquire’ and ‘disturbance’ would be a lot more natural coming out of his mouth as he says “Erm… yes… Hello there… I have some children digging through my bins?”
“Children? Ya know what they’re after?” I ask.
Probably hungry.
This might be a case for social workers more than security officers.
Children probably aren’t looking for kompromat… or stuff they could use to spoof his identity… but you never know…
“Yes… they appear to be sorting for… metal…?” he says, uncertainly.
I blink all six of my eyes, a bit thrown by that.
“Metal? What they want that for? There even metal in there?”
“Oh… yes… quite a lot, as it happens! You see, I run a repair shop and, as a byproduct of my work, I generate rather a lot of scrap… It’s the recycling diurnal tomorrow so I was just emptying some into my bins when I heard someone asking me what I was doing… I turned and saw that it was a group of children. I explained it to them… answered all their follow-up questions and, then, they went away. I thought it was a little odd but I just shrugged it off and went back inside… That was until [20 minutes] later, when they came back with baskets and a tarp, opened up my bins and started pulling out armfuls of rubbish!”
“So ya spoke to ’em? They’re Vekthian kids?” I ask.
He made it sound like he didn’t know them and, while he’s not obliged to know every member of his species on the station, he probably would.
“They’re not Vekthians, no. I don’t know what species they are but they’re small (maybe a bit less than [a metre]), green skinned bipeds…” he answers.
“So they was wearin’ translators then?”
“Oh… I suppose they aren’t children… they were just so small I thought they couldn’t be fully grown!”
“You tried talkin’ to ’em?… Asked ’em to stop?”
“Yes… I did… They told me that, as I didn’t want these things any more, I didn’t have the right to stop them from taking them… I… They scared me a little…” he says.
“They threatened ya?”
“No, no, no!… Not directly, anyway… just… something about the way they were looking at me… it was unnerving… It made me feel as if I oughtn’t to push the issue.”
I sigh “Alright, Sir… Tell me where ya are and we’ll be along to have a word with ’em in a few [minutes].”
“I’m inside Fiaf’s and Son’s Repairs, in the shopping district… They’re in the alley by the side.”
“Got it… see ya soon.” I say, hanging up.
I stand and look down at my partners, Monos, the taciturn, [3m] Kyklo, and Kwaestor, the [2.4m] Kwilion with a personality as prickly as his back.
“We got a situation, we gotta g-Nooooo…” I frown down at Kwaestor as I press closed the weapons cupboard he’s trying to open “…it’s a call about [metre] tall bipeds goin’ through bins… You do not need a pulsegun, Rambo(!)”
The little hystricine man erects his quills and scowls up at me for comparing him to the antihero of that old Terran tragedy the three of us watched recently but doesn't say anything as he turns to make his way through the door with Monos.
I come out and take the lead as the door locks behind us and we start wending our way through Xartham’s broad, tall corridors.
People cut a wide berth around us as they see us approach.
It makes sense, I guess… we are a group of two Class 8s in security uniforms and a high 7 (not in a uniform because of the quills) but… it always makes me a bit exhausted, the way most people are so obviously scared of Threndians…
I guess that’s primarily why I like spending time with those odd folks I meet who’re same Class or higher than me… When I share a table with a Kyklo, a Spelvuk or a Terran, I can just tell they aren’t scared that I’m going to reach across the table to crush their skull in my fist at the slightest provocation!
Kwaestor isn’t scared of me but he is tiresome to hang around with, for other reasons.
Kwilions are notoriously cantankerous and crotchety, because of the same evolutionary history that gave them a backful of spines(!)
A few minutes pass before we make it to the shopping district and, sure enough, I see a gaggle of very childlike beings (whose species I don’t recognise) sorting through piles of trash (throwing all the metal bits into baskets that already look far too heavy for anyone that size to lift) on a large tarp they’ve laid out on the ground, passersby staring quizzically at them with dozens of different configurations of face.
They’re in an alley behind a shop with a worried looking, pink furred, bipedal cervine man standing in the window.
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He looks relieved when he sees the three of us.
“Alright guys…” I say, announcing myself.
Six faces all whip to me and I instantly understand what that Vekthian was talking about!
At [400kg] I could easily be more than ×100 their mass and, still, something about the intensity behind those eyes is unnerving!
Not letting it show on my face, I keep going “…ya mind explainin’ to me what exactly’s goin’ on here?”
A female (?) steps forward and my attention flicks to her as she says “The pink [grasshopper deer] man said this was stuff he didn’t want anymore, so we’re taking it.”
“Uh-huh… Ya didn’t think o’ just… buyin' metal if ya need it that badly?” I ask.
“Why would we [buy] something we can get for [free] here(?!)” she scoffs, gesturing to the trash behind her.
“Because there are rules, you little delinquent!” snarls Kwaestor, spines flared, lurching forward and pointing a pawhand down at the girl who doesn’t flinch away, just training her bright yellow, forward facing eyes on him.
My lower right hand extends to his chest (careful to avoid his forest of spines) and pushes him back behind me as I fold my uppers across my chest, assessing the group.
“Hmmm… what’s ya name, young la-young one?”
“Viig.” she answers, letting me know she is a young lady with the femininely flagged name.
“And where're ya from, Viig?”
“Graom.” she answers, naming a planet I’ve never heard of.
I see what’s happened here…
This group must be from some underdeveloped backwater with a peculiar culture and this’s the first time they’ve ever left their home planet.
It happens now and then.
With the best part of 34,000 species kicking about the galaxy, the occasional bit of culture clash is practically unavoidable.
I’m sure, as soon as I explain, they’ll be very embarrassed.
“OK, Viig… on Graom, doin’ this…” I gesture to the trash her compatriots are still digging through “…might not be a big deal, but here…? Here, it makes folks uncomfortable…”
“No it doesn’t…” she frowns, confused “…we’re not uncomfortable!”
“Yeah…” I sigh, unable to tell if she’s being purposefully dense “…I wasn’t talkin’ ’bout you. I was talkin’ ’bout these people…” I gesture to the crowd of passers by, rubbernecking at the binraiders being confronted by security officers “…but, mainly, I’m talkin’ ’bout the guy who owns this shop!” I point behind them “This is his trash and he don’t want ya diggin' through it!”
Her mouth falls open and she narrows her eyes at me in (difficult to fake) confusion before asking “How can it be [his] trash… he said he put it in here because he doesn’t want it anymore… he put it in here to be taken away… Why does it matter whether it’s us who take it away or whoever normally does it?”
I give a frustrated sigh and answer “Because normally it’s done by a sanitation droid that takes it to be recycled without diggin’ through it, without leavin’ piles o’ the stuff it don’t want behind and without examinin’ any of it! There might be stuff in there he don’t want anyone to see!”
“Like what?” she asks, as if the word ‘embarrassment’ would be another one flagged as a loanword she wasn’t fully comfortable with yet!
“Like anything! Like that’s his business and none o’ yours…”
She shrugs her shoulders and answers “We just want the metal… we’ll put everything else back.”
“Ya’ll put it all back, right now, or I’m placin’ the lot o’ ya under arre-”
“What’s going on here?” comes a harsh, guttural, translated voice of someone standing behind me and about a [metre] shorter.
I turn and see a species I don’t recognise for the second time today.
They must be quite fragile, judging by the protective rubbery green shoes their 8 sharp feet are slipped inside and the… 21-22-23-24… bungs of the same material they have, placed onto the three spines on each of those legs, to protect them from being snapped off.
Regardless, there they stand, face not showing even a little hesitation over confronting a Threndian, a Kyklo and a Kwilion.
Their face has scratch scars that cross one of two large eyes and must have blinded two of the smaller ones, covered by a patch.
Their mouth is flanked by long, metallic looking, red fangs and it’s full of the same stuff.
I gesture to the binraiders.
“Ya know these guys, Sir or Ma’am?”
“I’m a Ma’am to you… and yes I know them. Is there a problem here?”
Carefully, since something about this woman sets me on edge despite her seemingly fragile body, I answer “Yes, Ma’am… we were just attempting to get them to stop raidin’ people’s bins for metal.”
The arachnoid woman gives an exasperated sigh and prays “Weaver preserve me(!)” before leaning around me to say “Viig… did you think of showing the soldier here your holo(?) The one Emiko gave you…(?) The one with your credentials on it(?)”
“What credentials…?” I ask, very confused.
What the [fuck] kind of credentials would make digging through bins acceptable?!
Is this some kind of harebrain new [guerilla] sanitation inspection method or…?
The black and red exoskeletoned woman produces a holopad with a… GU diplomatic seal displayed and hands it to me!
I take it and hold it in my lower arms, low enough for my much shorter companions to see.
“It’s fake!” sneers Kwaestor.
“It’s genuine…” I correct before the diplomat can, dazed.
“Yes. It’s genuine. That woman behind you and I are both diplomats… and the others are part of her retinue… Which means, as unbecoming of diplomats as their behaviour is…!”
“It’s covered by diplomatic immunity…” I finish for her, my voice dead.
“Precisely.” she confirms, simply, taking back her holo.
This is not even slightly how I saw this interaction going!
Feeling a bit hamstrung, I turn back to the tiny humanoids and say “Could I please ask ya to at least put all o’ the stuff ya not takin’ back in the bin when ya done?”
“Sure…” shrugs the girl “…I think we were about done anyway.”
Sure enough, at that moment, her companions get off the tarp and, without a word needing to be spoken, go to the corners and gather them up, working together to tip all of the rejected trash back into the bin before folding up the tarp and placing it into one of the baskets that (clearly intentionally) had a little more space in the top to accommodate it.
I watch for the moment they try to pick up those baskets and realise how much they’ve overburdened them, meaning they’ll either not be able to lift them, or they will and they’ll break, spilling that metal they seem to think is so precious everywhere!
It doesn’t come.
Instead, each of the little bipeds goes to a basket, all of which have got to have more than [3kg] of scrap metal in, and casually lift them to their chests with only slight apparent effort!
I stand, agog, looking at the species I didn’t know existed until a moment ago that have just demonstrated strength consistent with being Class 9s!
I’d even say that they’d have to be higher if I didn’t know there was only one type of people that’s higher and they’re definitely not any kind of Terran!
I’m going to have to look up that species later!
I thought I knew all species above 7! Those are the ones law enforcers have to be aware of, afterall!
As the (apparent diplomat) Viig woman draws up to the much larger dodecapod, the latter extends a three fingered hand to the former’s forehead and flicks it with a claw of that red stuff.
*Tiiing* comes the solid, reverberating sound that makes me doubt that that stuff’s anything like as fragile as I took it for!
“OWWW!” snarls the smaller woman, up at the larger “Spirits was that for!?”
“What part of ‘low profile’ challenged your comprehension, halfwit!?” returns the arachnoid, just as angrily, as she turns to walk away with the line of binraiding diplomats.
“The part where I’m supposed to let enough metal to arm ten villages just go to waste!”
“By the time you get that metal back to our planet it’s not going to be worth…!”
I stop listening and slump dejectedly…
What the [fuck] am I going to write in the report for this?