Mom chuckled at me as I plodded down the street a step behind her. I was exhausted. I'd caught my breath, but my face was still flushed. My bag felt heavy on my shoulders even though I wasn't carrying much. It was warm, but fortunately the sun was at our backs as we approached the business district.

District might've bee a bit of an overstatement. It was one long street leading to the main gate, filled with permanent businesses. The street here was the widest one in Ormson, our small town. It was fully paved in asphalt with blue flecks throughout. They were meant to help dissipate the heat so the blacktop didn't turn into a cooktop.

In front of each business were at least three marked parking spots, sometimes as many as ten. There were even a few buildings with shuttle landing pads either behind them or on their roofs.

A skilled pilot could land a shuttle on the blacktop without too much issue, but it would cause stress damage to the road. Between the weight of the shuttle - especially if loaded - and the heat from the engines, the practice was heavily discouraged.

Shuttles weren't all that common here, so the dozen or so landing pads were sufficient. The short range transports were for rich people. Most of them had left the planet the first chance they'd gotten. The merchant conglomerates had a couple shuttles for rush orders, at least according to an article I'd read on my terminal. And I knew the spaceports had some to move passengers to the surrounding towns. Those were the ones I saw most often. They were blue and white and emblazoned with a silver rocket over a red ringed planet. It was the logo of one of the transport guilds.

As we continued slowly down the street, Mom adjusted her pace to mine. The shops were mostly small, family owned places. We passed several repair shops, a jewelry shop, and a warehouse. Our town's hospital was also here. It was more of an office, to be honest. Inside, there was a waiting room, two exam rooms, and an imaging room. For anyone requiring admission, there was a ward with four beds, all in the same room.

There was a scrapper's shop to our left, across the street from the hospital. It was one of the larger buildings in the district. All kinds of equipment parts and bits of junk hung in the windows. They partially covered hastily scrawled signs advertising rates for common items. The shop bought and sold items recovered from the wilderness or The Heaps.

The Heaps weren't technically in town, but the area did make up a big part of Ormson's economy. The southern edge of the massive junkyard was about a mile outside of town. I wasn't allowed to go there, but I'd seen the mountains of metal in the distance.

The Heaps had come to be a few months after the civil war had ended. Those elsewhere in the system figured Caltrox was a dying planet. It was the perfect place to dump whatever trash they had that couldn't be incinerated. Cheap too. The Heaps were filled with millions of broken and outdated machines and vehicles. There were hundreds of spaceships and satellites too. The stacks of metal stretched on for miles into the desert.

Most of our town made a living by either scavenging in The Heaps or by working at the recycling and shipping factory outside the walls. It was tough manual labor.

After nearly ten minutes of walking, we finally approached our destination - the tavern. Vincent's place wasn't super fancy, but it was big. It had its own shuttle pad in the back, and ten parking spots out front. It took up twice as much frontage as the hospital. The building was two stories tall and was made of reinforced concrete with steel accents. There were half a dozen windows facing the street on each floor.

There were two short concrete walls out front, perpendicular to the roadway. They framed a simple set of stairs leading down to a steel door. Above the door, and just visible from the street, was a green and yellow neon sign that proclaimed the establishment's name: The Radiated Roach. To either side of the name, glowing red paint had been applied to the sign, forming a line drawing of a roach with long antennas. It charged up during the day and glowed all night.

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Mom held her hand out for mine at the top of the stairs, and I took it. "Do you remember the rules?" She asked.

I sighed. We did this every time Mom worked a shift. I began to recite the list. "Don't talk to strangers, don't leave the table without permission, make sure to finish my lessons, don't beg for a dessert, and always say thank you."

"Don't beg for anything." Mom gently corrected.

"Right, right." I agreed, rolling my eyes. I knew how to behave!

We started down the steps. Mom squeezed my hand three times. I did the same in return.

The steel door towered above me as we reached the landing. It wasn't there long, though. Three steps out, it split in the middle and slid to either side.

The Radiated Roach was big, by Ormson standards. Inside was a large common room with two dozen round tables spread throughout most of the space. Between two and five chairs sat around each, depending on its size. The bar, and the kitchen behind it, were to the left as we entered. A hodge podge of barstools lined the long counter. The red bartop was clean. It was covered in scars from multiple instances of bar patrons trying to show off or the brawls that broke out on occasion.

Against the wall opposite the bar were about a dozen booths. They were made of some kind of shiny synthetic material, and where white and neon green in color. The two in the corners were the largest, curving almost all the way around the big tables.

There were a few other doors around the room. Two led to bathrooms. One led to a private dining room, usually reserved for parties. The last led to a staircase. That was how guests of the tavern accessed their rooms on the floors above.

The Radiated Roach was owned by a man named Vincent. He'd taken over the tavern when the previous owner died. That happened at least a few years before I was born.

Vincent was not a small man. He towered over his bar, more than six and a half feet tall. His hair was neatly clipped - short on the sides and longer on the top. He had it parted to one side and held in place with a light pomade. It had started out dark brown when he was a young man, but it was now half gray. The same had happened to his full but trimmed beard. The barkeep had broad shoulders and hands that made his mugs look like toys. He still had the large muscles he'd cultivated in his youth.

His usual uniform consisted of a tight t-shirt with the bar's logo, tucked into his loose cargo pants. In turn, the cuffs of his pants were tucked into a massive pair of black army boots. Today, his shirt was yellow.

He was a retired guildsman, one of the few that my mom liked. He proudly displayed his guild's crest behind the bar's counter directly above the rows of liquor bottles. He'd belonged to the Titans, a guild of mercenaries specialized in heavy weaponry and known for their Behemoth suits of armor. Behemoth armor was essentially a massive armored spacesuit that was near impossible to destroy. It augmented the wearer's strength too.

It was a really cool piece of tech. I'd looked it up on my terminal one evening after I'd overheard Vincent sharing stories with another patron.

I didn't know much else about Vincent. I think he had kids, but I didn't know how many. If he did, then they were adults now and living their own lives somewhere else.

Vincent was good at running his tavern, though.

The Roach, as many affectionately called it, was one of only three places you could get food after the marketplace closed. It was by far the best of the three.

Vincent's wife, Martha, ran the kitchen. She had other cooks who worked under her, but the recipes and menu choices were all hers. I had never had a bad dish from her kitchen. Martha was a thin, but fit, woman a few years younger than Vincent. She always wore a bandana on her head, and never showed her hair. It would never find its way into the food. Martha's t-shirt matched Vincent's every day. She wore a plain white half apron. Her voice was a constant sound when it got busy. She worked hard to keep her kitchen on track.

The tavern was almost empty as we entered, given the amount of seating available. There were two men sitting separately at the bar. A small group of four women sat in one of the booths. Scattered around the other tables were another few people enjoying a late lunch or an early beer.

Mom marched me right to my usual table. It was a small square table in the corner next to the kitchen door. It was out of the way, and Mom would pass by often as she ran food from the kitchen and dropped off new orders. I sat in the chair closest to the wall. It was a hard gray metal, and didn't have a cushion. This gave me the best view of the whole tavern.

Mom noticed me looking around the common room as she tied a bright green apron around her waist. She tapped the table in front of me. "Lessons first." She reminded me.

"Yes ma'am." I replied, setting my backpack on the table. I removed my terminal, headphones, and a notebook.

"I'm going to check in with Vincent and then I'll get you a drink, okay?"

I nodded and powered on my terminal to resume my lessons. My bag went onto the floor at my feet, leaning against the wall. I unclipped my mechanical pencil from the front of my notebook and flipped to the next blank page. My lesson loaded and I got to work. At least the math was done.