Alle Laufen
Kessarine, Claim Nine, Wild Space
"There is nothing here; I have already asked. There is nothing to buy, nothing to trade for, and nothing worth having."
In the week since Sam had known Ossa, she had found the Togruta to be her opposite number in nearly every way possible. Where Ossa was vain, Sam was not. Where Ossa was fastidious, Sam was uncouth. Where Ossa spoke properly and enunciated, Sam mumbled single-syllable words. The only common ground the two women shared was that they were both dangerous, but even that was in different ways.
"Yea'? Who'd ya ask?"
They called the station Nine. That was it. Or at least that was what Dobb had reported back. The Sundry had landed the day before, jumping out of hyperspace into a clusterfuck of a rubble belt that had once been a small world on the tail of what was apparently a simple hit job. Sam didn't quite understand why they couldn't leave and continue the chase, only that they couldn't, and also that the matter had become quite heated. Jhal and Skree were well into day two of their arguments, flinging around words that were far beyond Sam's comprehension.
Mass shadows. Jump solution. Particle shielding. Navicomputer. Inertial compensator. Ray shielding. Hull ablation. Sensor shadow. Astrogation.
They meant nothing to her, maybe even less than nothing. In one ear and dissolved in the ether. Too much moving shit to make the jump. All Sam knew was that it wasn't a problem she couldn't help with, and therefore she stayed the fuck away from it.
"You walk like a loading crane."
She didn't bite; she never did anymore. Sam had spent thirty-odd years rising to the bait, caught in endless violent conflict because all she knew how to do was see red and react. It had been left behind; whether it happened at the bottom of the bottle or in the cell wasn't important. The fact was that she didn't rise to shit anymore, not in an emotional sense.
The pair walked into the 'cantina', a spartan mess hall that, at that moment, held about seven people, which somehow made the place seem even emptier. They called it Provides, owing to the fact that apparently above the door there was a vandalised sign that once said Kessarine Provides! As Dobb told it, the whole place had been a mining operation; they called it Nine because this place was 'claim nine' in the company's destruction of the world into a maelstrom of fragments and rubble. Then the company, once they had harvested all they could, just fucked off and left the mess behind. A few people stayed behind and made what they could out of it.
Which wasn't much.
Something about mushrooms and mash. Old company stock. Other people's cargo. Oh, and one Sullustan runner, the only guy who knew how to make the jump out of this place who had conveniently just left for a supply run and wasn't due back for another five weeks.
Sam beelined for a wall-mounted vending machine on the wall, fed it some credits and then stopped, staring impassively at the buttons as if they meant something. They probably did, but she couldn't fucking read them. She pressed one. Nothing. Then another. Nothing. Then another. Still nothing.
"Do you know what you want, or are you simply pressing things?" Ossa inquired, leaning against the wall next to the machine with her arms folded, observing Sam as if this were a zoo exhibit.
Sam pressed another button. Nothing.
"That is the fourth one you have pressed."
"Ya countin'?"
Ossa pushed off the wall and circled around to stand next to Sam, presumably to see what about the vending machine was worth scrutinising.
"'Protein wafer, savoury.' 'Protein wafer, sweet.' 'Protein wafer, fish.' Gods, whoever stocked this despised the people who worked here," the Togruta commented, wrinkling her nose in disgust. "You do know that there's real food on the ship, yes?"
Sam wasn't even that hungry. Grit was like that. It kept you up, kept you awake, and murdered the appetite, but at this point she was being guided by boredom and rationing. She was beginning to understand that grit was not made to be rationed. Never fully peaking, never fully crashing, she rode the waves in-between that made this place seem surreal. From the same eleven company-approved, warped by time, royalty-free songs that played over the speakers on loop, to the dust that coated every surface and made the air taste like metal. She could feel her limited impulse control fading, stretched thin, and-
CLANG!
The reverberation of impact travelled up her scrapheap arm, from the metal fist now buried in the vending machine that had robbed her and straight into the bone anchor in her upper arm. A few heads turned. Sam didn't care. It hurt. Everything hurt anyway. Her face remained blank, gaunt, unblinking.
"Was that satisfying?" Ossa asked, voice collapsing under the weight of its own condescension.
"Nope."
Pushing away from the vending machine, Sam ambled towards one of the cantina tables and unceremoniously plopped herself down. Ossa didn't make herself as comfortable, lurking at the end of the bench, her eyes flicking over the rest of the room before looking back down at Sam.
"If you want to eat, they serve their own produce. Fungus. They grow it in the dark in a room that I sincerely doubt anybody has cleaned since the company left," The Togruta offered, knowing full well neither of them would be opting for abandoned mining station-grown fungi. "Dobb has already befriended the family that runs things here. I would wager she is in their kitchen right now, sharing her spices."
There was still food on The Sundry. Sam couldn't say why she approached the vending machine. Nor why she punched it. Something to do. Kill time while Jhal and Skree figured a way out of this rubble field and Rade plotted their next steps to finish their job.
What even was fungus?
"There is nothing here; I have already asked. There is nothing to buy, nothing to trade for, and nothing worth having."
In the week since Sam had known Ossa, she had found the Togruta to be her opposite number in nearly every way possible. Where Ossa was vain, Sam was not. Where Ossa was fastidious, Sam was uncouth. Where Ossa spoke properly and enunciated, Sam mumbled single-syllable words. The only common ground the two women shared was that they were both dangerous, but even that was in different ways.
"Yea'? Who'd ya ask?"
They called the station Nine. That was it. Or at least that was what Dobb had reported back. The Sundry had landed the day before, jumping out of hyperspace into a clusterfuck of a rubble belt that had once been a small world on the tail of what was apparently a simple hit job. Sam didn't quite understand why they couldn't leave and continue the chase, only that they couldn't, and also that the matter had become quite heated. Jhal and Skree were well into day two of their arguments, flinging around words that were far beyond Sam's comprehension.
Mass shadows. Jump solution. Particle shielding. Navicomputer. Inertial compensator. Ray shielding. Hull ablation. Sensor shadow. Astrogation.
They meant nothing to her, maybe even less than nothing. In one ear and dissolved in the ether. Too much moving shit to make the jump. All Sam knew was that it wasn't a problem she couldn't help with, and therefore she stayed the fuck away from it.
"You walk like a loading crane."
She didn't bite; she never did anymore. Sam had spent thirty-odd years rising to the bait, caught in endless violent conflict because all she knew how to do was see red and react. It had been left behind; whether it happened at the bottom of the bottle or in the cell wasn't important. The fact was that she didn't rise to shit anymore, not in an emotional sense.
The pair walked into the 'cantina', a spartan mess hall that, at that moment, held about seven people, which somehow made the place seem even emptier. They called it Provides, owing to the fact that apparently above the door there was a vandalised sign that once said Kessarine Provides! As Dobb told it, the whole place had been a mining operation; they called it Nine because this place was 'claim nine' in the company's destruction of the world into a maelstrom of fragments and rubble. Then the company, once they had harvested all they could, just fucked off and left the mess behind. A few people stayed behind and made what they could out of it.
Which wasn't much.
Something about mushrooms and mash. Old company stock. Other people's cargo. Oh, and one Sullustan runner, the only guy who knew how to make the jump out of this place who had conveniently just left for a supply run and wasn't due back for another five weeks.
Sam beelined for a wall-mounted vending machine on the wall, fed it some credits and then stopped, staring impassively at the buttons as if they meant something. They probably did, but she couldn't fucking read them. She pressed one. Nothing. Then another. Nothing. Then another. Still nothing.
"Do you know what you want, or are you simply pressing things?" Ossa inquired, leaning against the wall next to the machine with her arms folded, observing Sam as if this were a zoo exhibit.
Sam pressed another button. Nothing.
"That is the fourth one you have pressed."
"Ya countin'?"
Ossa pushed off the wall and circled around to stand next to Sam, presumably to see what about the vending machine was worth scrutinising.
"'Protein wafer, savoury.' 'Protein wafer, sweet.' 'Protein wafer, fish.' Gods, whoever stocked this despised the people who worked here," the Togruta commented, wrinkling her nose in disgust. "You do know that there's real food on the ship, yes?"
Sam wasn't even that hungry. Grit was like that. It kept you up, kept you awake, and murdered the appetite, but at this point she was being guided by boredom and rationing. She was beginning to understand that grit was not made to be rationed. Never fully peaking, never fully crashing, she rode the waves in-between that made this place seem surreal. From the same eleven company-approved, warped by time, royalty-free songs that played over the speakers on loop, to the dust that coated every surface and made the air taste like metal. She could feel her limited impulse control fading, stretched thin, and-
CLANG!
The reverberation of impact travelled up her scrapheap arm, from the metal fist now buried in the vending machine that had robbed her and straight into the bone anchor in her upper arm. A few heads turned. Sam didn't care. It hurt. Everything hurt anyway. Her face remained blank, gaunt, unblinking.
"Was that satisfying?" Ossa asked, voice collapsing under the weight of its own condescension.
"Nope."
Pushing away from the vending machine, Sam ambled towards one of the cantina tables and unceremoniously plopped herself down. Ossa didn't make herself as comfortable, lurking at the end of the bench, her eyes flicking over the rest of the room before looking back down at Sam.
"If you want to eat, they serve their own produce. Fungus. They grow it in the dark in a room that I sincerely doubt anybody has cleaned since the company left," The Togruta offered, knowing full well neither of them would be opting for abandoned mining station-grown fungi. "Dobb has already befriended the family that runs things here. I would wager she is in their kitchen right now, sharing her spices."
There was still food on The Sundry. Sam couldn't say why she approached the vending machine. Nor why she punched it. Something to do. Kill time while Jhal and Skree figured a way out of this rubble field and Rade plotted their next steps to finish their job.
What even was fungus?