Polon's anger is suddenly replaced by confusion. "Why protect this slug?" he asks, gesticulating at Xo. "Oh, it matters not - I'll sell you the protein for 2kl, and then, Xo" - Polon turns to the merchant - "you'll have until I offload the sludge to come up with three thousand, or I take it out of your hide."
Once Davis hears "represent Imperial interests", he immediately but surreptitiously starts scanning for threats. If she's in here, he doesn't doubt that her entourage is far behind.
"When I talk about buying your cargo, I mean buying your cargo, not pitching in for what you assume Xo owes you. I don't care how much money you're losing on this, there are no guarantees in this business. Xo owes you nothing, and if you still think this is his fault, don't buy from him again."
Polon grimaces as he rolls Hugh's words around in his head, then finally nods. "All right! 2kl for the thrice-damned cargo - and Xo keeps his knees. Do you have the money here?"
---
The cocooned woman doesn't appear to pick up on Davis' heightened alertness, but neither does Davis spot any telltale signs of an additional escort. It's hardly reassuring, however - there are many shops for a shadowing escort to hide in.
Swims and the woman shake hands, the black-suited bodyguard stiffening just a hair as the Whiirr breaches his charge's personal space.
They haggle a minute or two over the exact price, but arrive without too much debate at five thousand lats. Semo's informed of the cargo's destination and begins the arduous task of offloading the assemblers and agros into the cargo shunt, a microgravity section of
Jang-xur that easily funnels cargo from hangar to hangar.
Davis finally spots the additional escort as the woman leaves - a window shopper three stalls back hasn't moved on or bought anything until the golden woman moves away back down the auction hall. The escort, a plain, light tan woman in a drab green tunic, catches Davis' eye for a second. She smirks, as if to say better luck next time.
"An unexpected windfall," Swims says. "To find an interest in the cargo for what it is, not just the raw materials it represents. No doubt some Imperial official making purchases off the record while engaging in some... personal quirks," Swims adds, referring to the purchased children. "No matter, they're not here for us. Let us find the Bashakrans."
"Yeah, let's," he says distractedly. It's not so much the fact that he didn't spot the woman providing backup that worries him, it's the fact that she was confident enough to taunt him. He makes a mental note to be on the lookout for her in the future.
Hugh gives One-Ton a "Watch this" nod, then turns to Xo.
"We have a large amount of parts we would like to buy from you. Given the volume of our purchase and the assistance I have just given you, I think we can come to an agreement...namely, that my engineer" - Hugh points to Max - "gets to see your inventory and test the parts we want before we purchase them. I want to make sure that everything we do buy has passed his muster."
He turns to Max.
"I think that protein stuff may well be good for something, even if it ain't food no more. When you've got time, get a sample and see what it actually is. If it's crap, we can dump it - but let's keep some of the containers, I'm sure they're interesting little gadgets."
Xo flips a few toggles and his small stall just folds up and the "running lights" blink out. He gathers a few satchels and leads Hugh, Max, Mellish, and One-Ton to another lift. This one is a completely different design than the first lift they were in, which in turn was a different design than the one before that. The lift glides soundlessly along, finally opening onto a small airlock-style corridor culminating in a security door.
"The Aloof Merchant had several bays, all accessed by crawlways and three lifts. The people here have added onto it, installed extra shunts to move cargo out to the hangars and shuttle bays, what have you."
Xo inputs a code and the door cycles open onto a space the size of a Sam's Club. Roughly one third of it is taken up with what looks like the cruise engines off some freighter. Another quarter is a maze of plastic-looking crates, all labeled clearly in Imperial glyphs.
"It's all labeled. Take your time," Xo tells Max. "One-Ton, I appreciate your associates' assistance more than I can say. However, Master Polon has killed men before. Would it untoward to ask if we could barter some of the minor items on your list for... protection?"
---
Swims takes his group from the central hub of the auction house across the main traverse, over to a food market. The air actually gets better here - the scent of roasting mystery meats and exotic spices is a welcome change from the general tangy stink of the rest of the station. You pass by leafy green flora from Whiirr, blue cabbage-looking things that squeeze sky-blue juice, spiky balls that wither under heat to reveal nuts, Toucan Sam-on-a-stick, just all manner of food from hundreds of worlds. Two things stick out: Much of the "fruit" isn't something you could just pick up and eat, like you could an apple. It has to be juiced, or heated, or peeled and then the venom sacs removed, or what have you - no doubt a costly lesson in food preparation for some unlucky explorer. The second thing is that there are no open flames. There's no grilling on a space station, so you'll have to go elsewhere for the bratwursts.
Swims meanders through this bustling market. The population is mostly human, although you see many more Whiirr and even some Cyllans. Some of the humans, however, appear even more alien, gene-modded to the point of no return. Humans with tails, fangs, horns, armored skin, extra joints in arms and legs.
Swims leads you to what appears to be a butcher. Hunks of unidentifiable meat hang from hooks. Cryoboxes hold more protein. A burly man with skin the color of oak is feeding a defrosted side of... something into a grinder. He nods as the Whiirr captain enters. A gelatinous pudding comes out one dispenser, while a coarse gray powder pours from another. Davis notices a second man kneeling, working on one of the cryoboxes, his jumpsuit stained with the shop's product.
"Master Swims-the-Black, I would not have expected to see you in my shop after what you did," states the burly man.
The guy kneeling at the cryobox stands up, stands up too quickly, and swings what looks like a bullpup beam rifle from behind the freezer.
Davis walks in front, hands up. "These are special circumstances. Is there somewhere very private we can talk?" He looks over his shoulder to see if they were followed.
The gunman holds his fire but keeps his grip steady.
"Who are these people? Friends of yours?" the butcher asks Swims. "This pisses me off to no end..."
The gunman spits at Swims. "'Lest you convince us otherwise, we can talk right here."
"That run - your friends - it was out of my hands," Swims tries to explain. "We picked up what turned out to be a Khiraba... she tipped the Freedom to our trajectory and we were boarded."
"And the fact that you can't control your own crew makes us trust you how?" retorts the butcher.
Semo goes through the work of loading all the cargo onto the cargo shunt. Once that's done, he looks to see if there's a way he can accompany the cargo to it's destination. If so, he does - mostly out of curiousity, though making sure the transation gets completed on the other end seems valuable.
"Because first, she's dead," Davis says. "A few gunshot wounds and 100,000 volts run through your interface plug will do that do you. Also, there's this." He pulls out his laptop and brings up a rotating 3D image of Earth. "This is where we're from, and the Imperium wants to blast it to glass." He opens up a window and writes "Narsai" on it. "Do we have an understanding?"
Angel ditches most of his gear - albeit somewhat reluctantly - in favor of more local friendly cloths. Given the locale, that primarily means scrounged up battered old mono-color fatigues and a generous helping of oil stains. He talks quietly to himself as he gets dressed.
"Always the damned weirdest places. Meet some guy calls himself Captain Zero in the Basra market, get the layout of the compound. Follow some alien named Swims-the-Black to a free port on the other end of the universe. Not paid enough."
The only piece of gear he refuses to give up is his rifle, although he swips one of the dead crewmember's sidearms and kept it visible on his hip, hoping to draw attention away from the firearm. Exiting the ship shortly after the large captain and the spook, he tails them through the market, doing his best 'window shopping spacer' look and keeping an eye on them. He notes the woman doing the very same thing with the woman who seems to know their new partner. Noting her face, he files it away for later - he has the sneaking feeling it will come up again.
"I think that protein stuff may well be good for something, even if it ain't food no more. When you've got time, get a sample and see what it actually is. If it's crap, we can dump it - but let's keep some of the containers, I'm sure they're interesting little gadgets."
Max looks at Hugh with minor contempt.
"This is for the whole undermine the chain of command via explosives bit back on the ship, right?" says Max rhetorically, looking to dive into the parts manifest to see what he can use.
Xo's request for protection goes unanswered as One-Ton and Max look through the corpulent merchant's inventory. It's not that Max can tell what's quality and what isn't, but with One-Ton there, he quickly picks up an understanding of the good and the bad. Most of what's needed to repair the Morningstar is workmanlike but serviceable. Max figures that lanky captain Polon must have exacerbated his own situation, because even with Xo's worst parts, he couldn't see a ship being left without primary engines.
The action scientist and the mechanic fill their shipping container. The parts, especially the replacement sensor boom, are too large to tote back to the ship. They'll be shunted back by drone.
"I think we're good here, Verrill," One-Ton says.
"I'm glad we could do business, but I do wish you'd reconsider my request for protection," Xo says. "I could even make do with bartering one of those fiber-spools for one of your weapons."
---
Semo finishes moving the assemblers and agros into the loading zone. It's not apparent how the shunt works, but there aren't any glyphs warning people away from hitching a ride, so Semo grabs his gear and climbs onto one of the agro-drones. Soon after, bay doors cycle open next to the loading zone. There's a viciously loud hum, and Semo feels a lot lighter. The loading zone lifts up out of the deck, crane-arms unfurling from underneath, and rolls slowly into the shuntway. Apparently each loading zone is a type of drone or monotask. Under microgravity, the cargo impedes the drone little, and Semo is soon riding an agro-drone through a bustling mechanical underworld roaring with the noise of many such lifters. He doesn't know spaceships, but if he had to guess, the shunts would appear to be cargo passages built between the outer hull of Jang-xur and the interior bulkheads. That would explain the bone-chilling cold and the thin air, anyway.
His lifter sticks lightly to the outer hull - probably from what little spin-gravity the station uses in emergencies. Semo starts to shiver, each lungful of oxygen requiring more effort. The panic starts to set in, but he toughs it out, holding onto the drone with white knuckles and willing himself to calm down. The cold... It's getting harder to stay awake. Semo's just about to pass out when the destination door cycles and a blast of (to him) steaming hot air blows across his face. The lifter rolls into another cargo bay - B91 in Imperial glyphs - and into a docking space dominated by an Imperial assault ship, similar to the one whose engines Semo blew out hours ago. Semo ducks down behind his agro's motivator as he spots three Turai in the docking bay. The lifter settles into B91's loading zone. The shuntway door closes and Semo almost slips off onto the deck as gravity exerts its downward pull once more.
The assault ship's cargo bay cycles open, a long, narrow space underneath its main fuselage. It looks like there are three Turai standing guard, while two black-suited crew members run the docking cradle monotasks. Semo's in a pickle - if he stays put, he'll be going on a ride in an Imperial vessel - as long as he's not crushed by a monotask arm. If he remains in the loading zone, well... that zone is going to be very empty very soon.
---
The gunman doesn't know what to make of Davis' cryptic explanation, but the butcher catches on.
"You're telling me you're Narsai'i? That's a bold claim... you willing to prove it?"
"They're lying!" argues the gunman. "The Whiirr likely found out turncoat ain't a viable occupation and is trying to squirm his way back into our network. We'd be stupid to believe th- you don't actually believe this, do you?!"
"I don't have to believe anything," the butcher says with a grin. "They say yes to a brain-scan and we shoot them if they're lying, or they say no and we shoot them right now."
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