Private Mushroom Samba

[Sam Rodarch]

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?

 

[Vincello De'Cadera]

This fungus in particular was a nutrient and protein dense Mushroom. It had originally been grown in the darkest depths of what little whole caverns remained in the deepest reaches of Kessarine, but had been cultivated by the company to spring up pretty much anywhere there was a bit of moisture. It did the job, keeping men and women working in the mines fed enough to keep them going. As far as food went, it was neither full of flavour, nor pleasant to eat.

More importantly, for some people, you also couldn't smoke it.

Or rather, smoking it had little to no of the desired effects that many other wondrous Fungi found throughout the galaxy usually allowed for. Perhaps a quirk of nature, or perhaps a design of the company to take away what little joy could be found on the rotting carcass of a dead world. You couldn't even ferment the blasted things into any sort of proper alcohol.

Which was why Vin had resorted to drinking what the locals of the Nine simply called 'Crisp'. No one was particularly forward about what was in it, though Vin detected the flat remnant taste of engine coolant on his first sip. Not that it mattered much to him, he'd put worse in his body for less result.

What counted was that it kept the shakes away and the nightmares at bay. Well worth the scrap of knowledge he had paid for the bottle now clutched in his right hand. The pale blue liquid swishing back and forth as he stepped through the narrow corridors of the mining colony. His shirt stained with oil and earthen dust from the small storage compartment in the hangar bay he'd found to sleep in. "Kress, how the fuck do you manage to look worse every time I've seen you."

A disapproving voice called out ahead of him, Vin's half lidded eyes roaming up to find a massive Zabrak standing in his way. Recognition flickered through the haze, Eriks' huge form difficult not to pick out on this station.

"It's a skill." Vin slurred, his head spinning as much from his lack of true sleep as the deathly cocktail in his hand. "Hard fought for."

He smiled, an empty smile if ever there was one, and brought the bottle up to his lips. There was no burn with Crisp. Not the way there was with a proper Corelian whiskey or even Tatooine Chasers. No, instead it felt as though the liquid coated your whole inside, sending a chill up your spine and eventually through the whole of your core. Not an unpleasant feeling really.

"Fuck's sake, Vin. You 'been here for a month and look worse than some of the corpses we've found in the mines." The big lout of a Zabrak shook his head in disgust.

"Well, it ain't like I need to get cleaned up for anyone. The Marrow left me behind. The trader crews don't need me, and even that fucking fish wouldn't have me on." Calling a Sullustan a fish was both inaccurate, and offensive, but Vin wasn't in a state to care. It didn't help that every complaint was met with another scowl and shake of the head.

Both of them knew Vin's problems were of his own making, both of them knew he'd dug every hole he could for himself. Vin knew it because he'd always known, and Eriks knew it because for whatever reason the man had decided to become his friend.

Probably out of pity. "Might not be true anymore."

The bottle stopped half-way up to his lips as Eriks spoke. Eyes flickering over his glasses to look up at the big man.

"New ship landed a bit ago, need a navigator from what I hear. Missed Jero's supply run by-" Before he could even finish talking Vin was already trying to push his way past the big man. The Zabrak taking half a step back to let him through. Both of them knew he needed to get off this rock, but Vin felt it in his bones. The nightmares were getting worse. Crisp wasn't enough, without Sansana they would start creeping in again soon. He would see it. He wouldn't be able to stop it. He needed to get out. Needed to get back into Hyperspace. "Try to make a good impression!"

The zabrak called as Vin took a hasty left and went stumbling into the Provides.

Sam Rodarch

 

[Sam Rodarch]

Ossa's montrals were already twitching before there was anything for Sam to stare at. It wasn't sporting really, having a pair of horns on the top of the dome that let you feel the movement of the world around you. Then again, Sam had the distinct misfortune of getting into not one, but two bare-knuckle brawls with Sith, so sporting wasn't a concept that existed in the galaxy.

At least they were on the same team. Roughly speaking.

"Something is coming through the door that I would describe as unwell," the Togruta commented, still standing at the top of the mess table rather than sitting opposite or alongside Sam, whose eyes drifted up to witness the power of predictive passive echolocation.

Right enough, a man emerged. Bedraggled, bespectacled, held together by… well, not much.

"Ah, it is worse than that."

By default, Sam's eyes searched for the threat in the only way she knew how to read. Body language. Gait. Hands, most of all. Intention lived in the hands, whether it was a clenched fist, a finger on the trigger, or a hand reaching for a blade. They all told a story of what they wanted or were willing to do. Instead, she found a bottle, and the brawler with a skinhead didn't even notice that she had gone still.

Ossa's coral palms planted on the table as she leaned down to be level with Sam's eyes, canines peaking over grey lips in a carnivorous grin. Which, she had learned so far, was a tell that something insulting was about to be said.

"He is drunk, he is damp, he is filthy, and he is coming this way," she muttered, giving the full run-down, just in case Sam had presumably gone blind. She had not. "That is what you look like to everyone else, in case you were wondering."

"M'not drunk," Sam was sure to reply in that sparse drawl, as if that was the important correction to make.

If she had stopped to think about it, or had the capacity to consider it, Sam wouldn't have found many similarities between her and the vagrant. He was unkempt in a decidedly vagrant way, needing a thorough decontamination, a comb, and potentially a delousing. She was a different flavour. More Syndicate backroom, where they keep the tape and the pliers. Head shaved, decent boots, cargo trousers and a tank top that didn't try to hide anything. Scars, corded muscle and a big, fuck off, cybernetic arm with its mechanical guts exposed.

If there were any hypothetical similarities between them, it would have been that they both seemed run down in that way the face couldn't hide.

"No, you are not," Ossa agreed after a pause, returning to standing, folding her arms back across her chest in eternal judgment. She was the only person in the room who seemed to have cared about presentation when she got dressed that morning. Dark, form-fitting, nothing to grab onto, probably equipped with more armour weave than necessary. Sam knew that the Togruta was packing a metric fuck tonne of knives, but where they were sheathed was an entirely different question.

They could have been packed up her arse for all she cared, as long as they got the job done.

Sam hadn't taken her eyes off the bedraggled man since he walked in, but her mind, which tended to amble, get lost and then drop a train of thought like it never existed, managed to hone in on a single notion.

The grit.

The powder in her pocket that she had been rationing, the bumper supply bought right before the prison break. It was finite. It was fleeting. It wasn't everything, but it was energy, it was sharpness, it was her edge. Without it, she was tired; she was slow and for Sam, tired and slow might as well have been dead.

It was the back of her mind that if they really were stuck here for five weeks, then she would run out, then she would crash, and then...

"Sit down before you fall down," Ossa instructed the man when he was in earshot. "No, not next to her. There," she continued, pointing at the seat opposite Sam on the former work canteen table.

 

[Vincello De'Cadera]

"Well this ones bossy." Vin honestly meant to say the words in his head, but years of drug abuse and the "alcohol" swilling in his veins washed away that particular filter as he swept himself into the indicated seat. The bottle in his hand went clattering against the already dented durasteel, many nights of rough housing having seen it long past it's due.

His eyes swam as he tried to take in the two figures, one across and one to his side. Both of them were a bit blurry, the swill churning in his stomach slowly filtering into his blood stream ensuring that fact. The one sitting across from him reminded him of a Frist Shark, tense and coiled, as if she were ready to bite someone's throat out at any moment. At the moment it felt like it was his throat that was for the picking. Vin's eyes slowly flickered away from her and towards the Togruta.

She didn't seem much nicer. "Heard you were stuck."

Vin had learned a few years ago it was better to cut to the chase. After his...failings crept up, no one had wanted to spend more time around him than they had to. Not that he particularly blamed them. He didn't really want to spend time around them either. Most people were abject morons after all. Even in his delirious and dysfunctional state Vin could see that. Listening to some blaggard Captain prattle on about his various false achievements was about as painful as hearing the gunner howl about his many conquests.

Half the time he wondered if that was what had driven him to all this in the first place.

It wasn't, but he did wonder.

So, it was better to just get to point. These people didn't want to be his friends, and he didn't want to be theirs. They were a means to an end and so was he. He just hoped they were intelligent enough to see that. "Need an Astrogator."

It wasn't a question. More of an assumption based on relative knowledge. It was what everyone needed when they got stuck on Kessarine. Not that it happened all that often. Either the navi-computer did it for you, or you already came prepared. Only a particular kind of fool would come here unprepared, or a crew with a lot of bad luck.

 

[Sam Rodarch]

"Bossy," Ossa replied flatly, tasting the word and finding the flavour to be unimpressive. "Yes. Somebody has to be. Look at what happens when nobody is." The Togruta's practised hands did not spare Sam in the slight, gesturing at both her and the drunkard as if this were the table reserved for interventions.

It didn't bother Sam; most things didn't.

Once upon a time she would have been up on her feet, squaring up, spitting, swearing. Hot fucking rage you could feel in your teeth. That time had passed. Gone somewhere. She couldn't really remember where or why, just remembered how it felt, like looking through somebody else's memories. Sometimes, when the grit crash came, it came back when the shakes were bad, when the world was too bright and too loud. Made the temper feel like a symptom of shame more than anything.

She just sat there, bloodshot eyes focused on the man more than anything else. Drunk. Skinny. Glasses. She reached for a scenario in which he could have attacked and found that she would have snapped him in two if he tried anything. Couldn't find fuck all.

"Everyone here has heard we are stuck. Apparently, that is the only entertainment on this station," Ossa commented, hardly impressed by The Sundry's arrival being local gossip. The Togruta was constantly up her own arse, and it was little wonder why she was offended by a wastrel pointing out that they were in a bind. Her ego had probably taken a solid right hook there.

Sam's gaze went to the bottle, and lingered longer than she knew. Proper swill, the real desperate stuff that burned on the way down. The fighter's tongue moved to her gums, tasting the iron that lingered there. Her father had drunk whatever was nearest, too.

"Say it properly," the Togruta chided, her voice bringing Sam's eyes back onto the man, the silent threat sitting there like a promise of violence. "Not 'need an astrogator'. Say what you are and what you want for it." With better timing, the drunkard could have been speaking with Dobb, who would have happily negotiated and probably threatened to feed him at the same time. Unfortunately, he got the prissy blade snob who was less about being personable and more about being an arrogant wanker.

 

[Vincello De'Cadera]

Vin was used to all sorts of unpleasantness. Most of the Captain's he'd worked with over the last few years had nothing less than open contempt for him. Seeing the wastrel of an Astrogator as nothing more than a thing to be used until he wasn't helpful anymore. At least the Togruta wasn't starting with open insults, that was a small improvement over how some of his other 'relationships' had started.

Still, he didn't exactly like her. There was no need to be so fucking rude. He realized he looked like he slept in garbage, but it wasn't like he'd insulted her or anything...forgetting the bossy comment anyway.

Offering the woman a quick sneer, Vin took the bottle in his hand and took a deep pull off the draught inside. A shiver running down his spine as the vile liquid coated the inside of his mouth and flowed down his throat. The instead spike to the back of his head forcing a breath into his lungs. His eyes catching his opposite's gaze as she stared at the bottle. "I'm an Astrogator."

Vin began as he slowly offered the bottle towards Sam, figuring that it might be best to gain someone's favor in this conversation. His head turning towards the Togruta as he made his proffer.

"The last on the station." That was, as far as he knew, completely true. Everyone else who could get off this rock had long ago done so. The Nine wasn't exactly the type of place anyone stuck around on if they could help it. "I can help you get out of the system, and all I want is a ride to wherever it is you're going."

He paused for a second, then added. "And a bed."

Vin didn't want to sleep on a durasteel floor anymore. His clothes were ragged enough, and one more time getting caught on some piece of jagged might see the end of them entirely.