Chapter 4: Xinar Station, Xinar System

I suppose Nugels are an acquired taste, like crickets or titha burgers. I’m not saying I’d eat one, mind, just, you know, they’re only moderately annoying once you start hanging out with them and they’re no longer keeping you locked up in a tiny room.

 

Salice says hi, by the way. Of course, she doesn’t really say hi, but you know what I mean. Probably going to write more of these stupid messages to you as the days go by. I know you’re dead, but hey, maybe that means you’re reading over my shoulder? How’s the whiskey in Neek heaven? How are the ladies?

—Discarded biofilm letter found at the main hub of Xinar Station

 

DECEMBER 13TH, 2060 CE

 

Mmnnuggls trailed after Yorden in tall columns, spinning and chittering. There’d only been the six when he’d left the pod, stacked in one tall column and keeping a respectful distance. As the captain had woven through the throng of beings at the main hub of Xinar Station, the number of spheres had steadily increased. There were plenty of Mmnnuggls at the hub—this was Alliance territory, after all—but he didn’t care for the reason they were following him and Salice. He’d answered all of their damned questions during the approach to the station. They’d given him a fat satchel of sapphires in return and dropped him off at Xinar, as agreed. They needed to get lost. He’d never score a halfway-decent ship with a bunch of beach balls at his back, and he didn’t need their Risalian baggage. He’d had enough of that already.

Yorden had at least managed to get Salice and himself clothes, finally, from a menagerie store. It reminded him of his friend Chen’s SPACE STUFF!! shop, back at Callis Spaceport in the Systems. It was a place he’d dearly like to see again—Callis, Earth, Mars…the Charted Systems as a whole. Seventy-something was too old to go cavorting about a new set of systems. Yorden was aged, shipless, and ready to curl up in the soft cushioning of his favorite chair in his favorite bar in the northern lowlands of Mars and drown himself in whiskey. He’d first have to get Salice situated, of course—find her a job or something. All of that required a ship, however, which was his first order of business now that they were clothed.

The clientele of the hub smelled exactly as fragrant as Yorden expected, and the vendors’ wares—from small, caged animals to fancy weapons and bits of rare stones—were just as illegal in the Charted Systems as they appeared to be in the Alliance. Everything was comforting, delightful, and just the right shade of off-color.

Salice was now wearing a baggy, gray flight suit that hid her markings. For himself, he’d managed to find what could best be described as a tropical-print muumuu—although the pattern contained what looked more like andal trees than palm trees. Neek would have had a million snide remarks about the shirt-dress thing. Obnoxious forestry appropriation. Body prophylactic. Cheap way to tell beings you’re expecting never to have sex again. Yorden chuckled to himself. Foul language had been one of the few vices left unregulated by the Charted Systems’ peace treaties, with some words almost as valuable as currency. In that area, at least, he and Neek had been very wealthy.

Reluctantly, Yorden tugged Salice from the narrow sub-hall that housed the menagerie shop into the main area. A quadruped, clearly male, jostled Yorden as they passed by one another. His spiky fur roughly grazed Yorden’s calf, and Yorden rubbed the abraded skin. He thought about calling out something rude, but the being’s head was a meter higher than his, and he preferred to avoid the legs that ended in hock spurs.

Yorden placed a guiding hand on Salice’s shoulder, which she did not acknowledge, and continued steering them through the crowd. A short, vaguely duck-shaped being that was all the wrong colors for a duck smacked against Salice’s torso. When she failed to give way, it hissed at her and batted her leg with a webbed toe. She huffed at the being.

“Salice!” Yorden whispered. He tried to steer the Ardulan with a firmer grip on her arm, but quite unexpectedly, she resisted his maneuvering for a few moments.

“I don’t get you,” Yorden muttered under his breath as she reluctantly made the turn for the shipyard that sold secondhand crafts. Or, at least, the flashing map that dangled from the ceiling claimed it would lead them there. “You don’t always have to take the path of most resistance. Sometimes you can relax, you know?”

Salice raised her head and looked at Yorden, eyes narrowed and focused on his…beard? Did he have food in there? Self-conscious, Yorden pulled fingers through the matted mess and decided to worry about something else.

Like about that message he should send to Neek’s family. It was hard to decide what he should include. Their religion was so tangled now, especially after Neek had shown up on her homeworld with Emn. Maybe he wouldn’t tell them she was dead. Maybe he’d say she had ascended with the Ardulan. Was that a thing in Neek dogma? Maybe it’d be enough to cleanse her of her sins in the minds of her people. Even if she’d never admit to it out loud, Neek likely cared what her people thought of her. It’d be a nice tribute if he could clear her name a little. If that failed, he could always shoot a few holes in some government buildings. Neek would definitely appreciate that, too.

The noise of the crowd thinned. Yorden looked up from his musings to see that they’d finally made their way to the shipyard. The entrance was wide—about twenty or so of Yorden abreast and three times as tall. It was framed with metal—biometal, given its sheen—and lit up like a menorah. Scorched metal plating, crusted and lumped with old solder, lined the flooring of the threshold. The Mmnnuggl towers, of which there were now five, lingered around the corner to another hallway.

Ignoring his Mmnnuggl entourage, Yorden dropped his hand from Salice and stepped past the bay door and over the lumpy metal threshold. Salice followed. Inside, the yard was sparsely populated with sentients, which was good, since there was little space to walk. Directly in front of him, the floor was littered with ship components from food printers and viewscreens to basic cabling. While the ceilings were monstrously high, the depth and width of the bay was obscured by two large frigates buffering either side of him. A few smaller ships sat in front of the frigates, covered with loose wires and dust. Some were so old that they rivaled the Pledge in fledgling spacefaring technology. Others looked new—or at least had a relatively high ratio of cellulose content to biometal weave—but were severely damaged. There were shapes he’d never dreamed could fly, along with architecture he recognized, like that of Mmnnuggl pods.

About fifty feet from Yorden was one of the smaller Mmnnuggl vessels—it was potentially the most spaceworthy ship in the yard. It had a cracked main viewer, but the biometal exterior still gleamed with cellulose. He had no interest in spending more time on another pod, however, especially since he would have to rely on one of the beach balls to fly it. Still, it was worth getting a quote, if only as a baseline for comparison.

As soon as Yorden took a step towards the pod, a shimmery puddle appeared at his feet. A tall, yellow stalk rose from the mass and bobbed twice, and then a string of unintelligible sounds bubbled from somewhere near the floor.

“Common?” Yorden asked the blob. “I’ve got thirty-five sapphires. I want a ship capable of generating wormholes, tesseracts, whatever. I don’t care what it looks like, and I don’t care how it smells. As long as it can fly, I’m happy.” He glanced back over his shoulder at Salice, who was staring critically at the pod. “And it has to seat at least two.”

The stalk tilted left, bounced up and down as another four Mmnnuggls joined the crowd, and then elongated until the tip was at Yorden’s eye level. “One,” the stalk wheezed and pointed to another biped, who was prodding the cracked screen of the small pod with dissatisfaction.

“You don’t have anything without a telepathic interface?”

“No,” the stalk whistled. “One.”

Yorden scowled at the sales representative. “Yes, but I already have one of these. That’s the problem. Are none of the metal scrap heaps in here capable of wormhole travel?”

Instead of answering, the stalk shot back down into the gelatinous form, and then the entire being slipped into a crack in the metal flooring.

“Unhelpful.” Irritated, Yorden took a wide step over the crack, wound around an acorn-shaped ship that was missing its thrusters, dodged a pile of loose sheet plating threatening to tip over, and paused next to the pod. Maybe it was worth looking at. This one didn’t come with a crew of upset and concussed Mmnnuggls. Maybe Salice could fly the ship if he gave her some time to figure out the controls.

The biped that the blob had pointed to appeared around the other side of the ship and nodded at Yorden. Their hair, the color of dried blood, was long, their skin a translucent black made darker by the beige and yellow standard-issue flight suit they wore. They offered Yorden a small smile, but Yorden couldn’t manage one in return. The being’s appearance gave him a decidedly uncanny tingle in his chest.

“We don’t get many from the Charted Systems around here,” they said. The being held out their hands, palms up. “Greetings. My name is Qthoun. I’m a third-don Mind Talent. Third gender—gatoi. I’m out doing a bit of research, but not shopping. You don’t have to worry about a bidding war on this piece here, if it’s what you’re after.”

Yorden stared. He couldn’t help it. Salice was by his side, too, no longer behind him. He turned only to see that her eyes were wide, her mouth agape. At least he’d not misheard—or they’d both jumped to the same conclusion. Translucent skin, reddish hair. Talents. An Ardulan. Ardulum. The real Ardulum. A real planet that maybe traveled through space, that launched the spacefaring advances of the Neek people. And Neek—his Neek, his pilot and friend—wasn’t here to see it. She’d have had choice words for this moment, Yorden was sure. None came to mind, unfortunately. Yorden could only stare.

“I didn’t catch your name,” Qthoun prodded. Zie brought zir hands back to zir sides and leaned against the pod. “You all right? You’re damp-looking. I didn’t think Terrans secreted empathic mucus.”

“I…” Yorden trailed off, and then, without thinking, he blurted, “Are you from Ardulum? Does your planet move?”

Qthoun laughed good-naturedly and smacked the side of the ship. “You really aren’t from the Alliance, are you? Terran, right, unless there are other species in the Systems with facial hair that I’m not aware of? Yes, I’m Ardulan, from the planet Ardulum. We are in fact scheduled to move soon. I’m just finishing up some assignments before then.” Zie nodded at Salice. “The lighting in here is poor, but from the looks of things, you aren’t Terran. Where are you from, friend? Yoshin? Keft? Though the fingers are wrong, I suppose. They have claws. Your skin is transparent enough to be Ardulan, though, I don’t know why you’d be with a Terran. We don’t have any dealings with Earth and Mars, that I know of.”

“Aheh.” Yorden shoved Salice behind himself and tried to puff out his chest as much as possible. “My name is Yorden Kuebrich. Captain Kuebrich—well, at least I was until my ship blew up. I am in the market for a new vessel. She is with me.”

“With your Mmnnuggl posse?” Qthoun looked past Yorden’s shoulder. “That’s a lot of interest over a Terran and a biped woman.”

Yorden glanced behind him. The stacked Mmnnuggls were floating down and back up in a sort of slow waterfall effect. Tension? Yorden would have to be conscious of his future interactions with all Ardulans—Ardulans, holy shit—if he was going to be under constant Mmnnuggl surveillance.

“They’re with me, for the time being. My companion’s name is Salice, and she…” Damn it, he needed Neek. Ardulum was her fucking religion, not his.

Unable to formulate even the most basic of plans, Yorden simply stated, “She’s Risalian Ardulan. I don’t really know what that means, but she’s an Aggression Talent, second don. She doesn’t talk. It’s a thing.”

Qthoun’s posture straightened. Zie pushed off the pod and stood still, forehead wrinkling. Hoping he’d not made a grave error, Yorden stepped to the left, revealing Salice. He placed his fingers lightly on her forearm, just in case he needed to grab her and make a quick exit. She shrugged him off.

“Forgive me if this seems impolite,” Qthoun said, zir eyes fixed on Salice, “but while her appearance is certainly similar, her mind is…warped. She communicates in fragments of language and imagery. She tells me she cannot vocalize, but no Ardulan would suffer through such a minor abnormality. A healer could likely fix her in a few minutes.” Zie turned to Yorden. “In the interests of better understanding your, uh, Ardulan here, would you consent to visiting the healer I’ve brought with my crew? She’s quite good with abnormalities, genetic or otherwise. She just transferred from a research facility near Thannon, which is the biggest genetic mutation facility on Ardulum.”

Yorden turned Salice towards him. Her face was still frozen in shock, but her fingertips toyed with her sleeves, pulling and rubbing the fabric. That was the most interest he’d seen from her in just about anything since their escape from the Neek planet. “We haven’t got anywhere to be, not really,” Yorden said. “Would you like to see more Ardulans, maybe fix your throat so you can speak?”

Salice blinked, the movement so heavy with apprehension that Yorden took a step back. “Salice? Nod or shake your head. That’s all I need.”

Salice nodded, her eyes fixed on Yorden’s.

“Yeah, uh, maybe give us a few minutes.” Yorden smacked the side of the pod. “I want to see if I can get a decent deal on this thing. Uh, Kwithon, you wouldn’t know by chance if a pod can be flown without a telepathic interface? Or could you maybe ask Salice if she can fly it?”

“If she’s an Aggression Talent, then she’ll have no natural feel for piloting,” zie responded. “That training is reserved for Mind Talents, as they generally have better specialized skills. She could learn, certainly, but it would take a great deal of time. If you have some currency, however, the Quinn who runs the shipyard might be able to modify the pod for manual flight. It won’t have great maneuverability, but you’d both be able to fly it.”

Yorden nodded. “Thank you. I’ll look into it.”

“Excellent. So, we’re agreed, then?” Qthoun pointed out into the hall. “The rest of my crew is in a bar about five shops down. We’ll be there for the next hour or so. Meet me there if you’d like to see the healer.” The Ardulan headed out the door, but then hesitated when zie almost hit the wall of Mmnnuggls. “You are welcome too, of course. Our species have much to discuss, do we not?”

 

IT HAD TO be early in the day’s cycle. That was the only way a bar with this level of atmosphere could be so nearly empty. Mariachi-style music piped over the speakers, just loud enough that you could barely hear the beings next to you speak. There was a plethora of seating options available, but Yorden’s eyes were drawn to the curtained alcoves on the fringes of the pub. The overhead lighting was dim and purple, and the floor was sticky with what likely was a combination of mixed drinks, lies, and crushed dreams. God, he’d missed bars. They’d all been like this, once, back on Earth and even in the early days of the Charted Systems. The damn Risalian peace treaties had cleaned everything up almost overnight, removed the smell of blood from the walls and made crime as laughable as your fourth whiskey shot on an empty stomach. Here though…here a biped could really get lost in the woodwork, overhear government secrets, or land a delicate haul. Or drown his hesitations about a newly purchased and incomprehensibly modified Mmnnuggl pod with a cracked screen.

It hadn’t taken long to purchase the ship. The sales blob had been hesitant at first about the upgrades, but a proffered list of sales contacts in the Systems, as well as the direct comm line to the head of the Craston Commerce Department, had sealed the deal. It would take several hours before the modifications were complete, but Salice had again confirmed her desire to see the healer. She’d confirmed it emphatically, with a popping sound from her mouth and a grab-and-pull of Yorden’s hand. So then, she was not ready to make the big decisions about life and independence, but was decidedly keen on taking the steps to get there. Yorden made a mental note.

Yorden spotted Qthoun heading towards a table with a lone biped and followed zir.

“Kimm!” Qthoun waved to the tall Ardulan woman at the round table. She sat alone some meters from the main counter, five empty glasses in front of her. She was staring at the bottom of her sixth glass, swirling a viscous, yellow substance with a finger. Her hair was the palest orange Yorden had ever seen, so light that it was almost as translucent as her skin.

“Where is the rest of the crew?” Qthoun asked in Common as zie sat next to her. Zie motioned to Yorden and Salice to sit as well. The two approached the table but did not sit. Yorden’s entourage of Mmnnuggls had stopped at the doorway of the bar, watching. Yorden felt Salice pull against the cautionary grip he had on her hand, wanting to edge closer to the Ardulans, but this time, Yorden held tight. Snippets of past conversations with Neek ran through his head. They were fragments of Neek mythology, all peppered with the disdain and disbelief that colored all of Neek’s references to Ardulans.

“…and the damn Ardulans changed the code of our native andal…”

“…were so afraid of these strange bipeds that they kept their children away at first…”

“…hadn’t even conceived of plantation farming trees until the Ardulans came…”

“Where is everyone?” Qthoun asked again, startling Yorden from his thoughts.

“They said something about dessert,” Kimm said, the Common words coming out thickly accented, and eyed Yorden and Salice warily. “I’m curious as to how you picked up a Terran and an— Andal help us!” Kimm shot to her feet, pushed the table up and onto its side, and ran backwards into a support pillar. Salice pulled against Yorden’s hold, clicking her tongue and shaking her head side to side vehemently.

“What is that thing doing out here?” Kimm demanded.

Yorden righted the table and pushed himself in front of Salice, keeping a tight hold on her hand. He narrowed his eyes.

“Problem?” he breathed. The music in the bar was fading. The few conversations surrounding them dwindled. Eyes, and what passed for eyes, turned their attention to Kimm.

Qthoun reached out to put a hand on Kimm’s shoulder, but she pulled away and spat on the floor. “Flare. That thing is dangerous. Kill it now, Captain, before it destroys the entire hub. I know exactly what is wrong with her.”

“Salice isn’t going to destroy anything unless I ask her to.” Yorden felt his face flush as Salice’s fingers tried to slip from his. He’d expected something like this—well, maybe not exactly like this—as it seemed unlikely that actual Ardulans would take well to the Risalian versions. He wasn’t quite sure what a flare was, but he would have been pretty weirded out by a genetically altered Terran if he just randomly met one in a bar. Earth still had all those old laws about GMOs and sentient beings. He was probably biased, but then again, it looked like some of the Ardulans were as well.

A biped with short talons and shoulder-length red hair stood from their chair and stepped towards Yorden. “Everything okay here, friend?” they asked in shaky Common.

“Only if you’re okay with being fried to a crisp with stolen energy,” Kimm hissed.

Yorden waved the biped back. Several others left the bar, struggling around the Mmnnuggl towers. “I got it, pal. Thanks.” The biped nodded and sat back down, much farther away this time. The bar was now still.

Qthoun reached out a hand to Kimm. “She’s from the Systems, Kimm, so no way she’s a flare. She isn’t plastered in markings, even. She’s just some toy of Risalian engineering, but borderline sentient. I was just hoping you could fix her throat so she could talk. I’d love to hear her story. So would Corccinth, I’m sure, in our reports. You’re up for promotion next year. Corccinth is the one you want to impress.” Qthoun gripped Kimm’s upper arm and hauled her from the pillar to Salice. Kimm strained against the grip. “She’s an Ardulan, mostly,” Qthoun hissed at Kimm. “Stop acting like a first don. Would you act this way around a Keft?”

Yorden heard the faintest wisp of “you don’t understand,” before Salice gasped as blood streaked from her nose. Kimm launched herself at Salice, breaking from Qthoun’s grip, and tackled her to the ground.

Yorden was on them a moment later, gripping fistfuls of orange hair and landing blows to where he hoped kidneys lay. “What the hell?” he yelled as a sharp elbow caught him in his cracked rib, making him cough with pain. “Aren’t you people supposed to be gods?”

Kimm screamed and drove her palm into Salice’s nose. There was a cracking sound, and the blood flow increased. Yorden snagged Kimm’s hand and twisted it around her back, snapping joints as he hauled her off Salice and pinned her to the wooden floor. Kimm tried to redistribute his weight and flip him off, and Yorden bucked dangerously to one side before recovering.

“If I hadn’t been on pellet rations…” he muttered as he managed to regain control.

“You have no right to harm an Ardulan, Terran!” Qthoun yelled. A glass broke over Yorden’s head, and the yellow contents dripped into his eyes. Yorden was too well versed in fighting, bar or otherwise, to let the stinging stop him. If the Ardulans wanted to take this fight up a level, Yorden would oblige. He yanked Kimm’s head back by her hair and slammed it down into the floor while bringing his elbow back to connect with Qthoun’s chest.

Yorden was so much larger than either of them, even with the malnutrition, that it was all over by his next breath. Qthoun crashed into the table, its edge digging into zir back as the table collided into the pillar. The gatoi fell into a heap, gasping and shaking. The woman underneath Yorden lay dazed. To his left, Salice sat upright. Her nose was flattened to her face and covered in maroon blood.

The bar had emptied. The music was gone. The only thing Yorden could hear was the low humming sound of Mmnnuggls. They spun forward and unstacked, one by one, forming a wide halo around Yorden and levitating just below his chin height.

“Conqueror,” one whispered.

“Ardulan conqueror,” twittered another.

“He fears nothing,” said a third.

Yorden ignored them and knelt next to Salice. Her nose was not actively bleeding anymore, and while the break looked horrible, it could likely be repaired. He was more worried about the streaks of dried maroon that trailed from her ears and eyes. The captain knew all too well what Ardulans were capable of with their microkinesis. If these Ardulans had further damaged Salice… He looked back at the crumpled gatoi, watched Kimm’s shallow breaths. He was done here. Done with the Alliance and done with this Ardulum business. It was time to take Salice and go somewhere where they could both live out their lives haunted by their past, not actively engaging with it.

“Can you stand?” Yorden asked Salice gently. He got to his feet and offered her a hand, which she took. She was not unsteady, and her eyes were sharp, focused. Pain could do that to a being. Yorden chuckled and pulled a thin strand of hair from the matted blood on her face.

“Nothing you haven’t seen before from a Risalian, I bet.”

That earned him a crooked smile.

“Let’s get on our ship and get the hell out of here. Okay?”

Salice nodded. Yorden turned back to the bar entrance, or where he remembered the entrance being. Save for the empty space above them, Mmnnuggls surrounded them completely, blocking his vision. They kept a three-meter distance from them, but their numbers had swollen to well over one hundred spheres. Where the hell had they all come from? And why were there so many colors now, from true black to flowery lilac? The tips of some of their ears were red, and the circumference of their bodies ranged from the size of Yorden’s fist to twice the size of his head. They spun around him in their stacked circles, twittering. Chanting.

“Get out of my way!” Yorden crooked his arm in warning, and the Mmnnuggls stopped. All at once, they fell to the floor and began to vibrate. A hum rose up from the crowd, and drinking glasses across the bar shattered in a wave.

“We obey the killer of Ardulans,” the Mmnnuggls chanted in unison. “We obey Terran Yorden Kuebrich, the Conqueror.”