Without going into too much detail, the farewells were, let’s say… awkward.
For the life of me I could not figure out what the emotion was on Jalad’s face. I guess he was trying to show a brave face, while not being used to goodbyes? I don’t know. I just work here.
Dzira was in a whirlwind. Worried about her people. Worried about me. Feeling guilty of the unburdening of secrets. Uncertainty. The uncertainty was killing her. To that end I reassured and comforted her, employing all of my psychological skills into a pep talk that would hopefully prevent that uncertainty from bringing her demise. She was in good hands I was comfortable to say. Yet still, I was worried. Again, something I am not used to.
Famous last words.
“All right,” I told myself, trying to rip the proverbial bandage off. “A lot at stake here. This is why I don’t do partners. If I die, I can’t feel bad about it because it’ll be just me and my own damned fault.”
Checks were complete. Ready for takeoff. No new messages, but a red herring of a message was going to be sent out shortly. I would love to say I had a plan beyond that. Ha. If I could only be so lucky. Long drawn out plans are too much to remember anyway. Assurances were given to a certain someone though that I knew what I was doing. Which was not an outright lie; I was in fact aware that my plan did not entail much of a …plan.
“Waaade,” I said as feigningly friendly as I could into his answering machine. “It’s Rumpelstiltskin. Be there shortly. Make sure everything is in place. We’ll start as soon as I get there.”
That ought to get their attention. Truth was, the only extent of a plan I had was to be in three place at once. Jalad and crew will blow something up, something big and shiny of Zalud’s preferably, while they – Jupiter willing – think I am on my way to Wade’s. They go to intercept me, I’m not there. Something somewhere else blows up. They chase the other lead and I’m not there, nowhere to be seen. Instead, I will be worming my way through the capital.
Fingers, er, tentacles crossed. Or whatever appendages you have.
Temptation to contact the SS Jalad and Friends kept rearing its head on my journey to the capital. A flick of a switch and a certain someone could help me pass the time, if not in the way I grew accustomed to in a short amount of time. Such an idea could prove disastrous, if not fatal. Couple days there, a day or two on the planet to make a mess, then a few days back in space to link back up with our recently liberated iron island. I don’t think those ships are made of iron. That would be all kinds of inefficient. You get the idea though.
Closer to the capital, however, I switched the comms systems to observe what was going on the in the area. There are as many monotonous talk shows in space as there are on AM radio.
And sports. If you ever struggled to keep up with Earth sports on a radio, imagine trying to figure out what is going on in a match of space cricket.
One spectacularly uneventful trip later, I was within range of the capital of the Intergalactic Empire. I think I got that right. I’m sure there was some other name for the planet itself.
Arriving at new planets is always an interesting experience. Always expect awe and wonderment. Of some sort. There are a number, I’ll admit, that look quite a bit alike. A lot of sandy planets. Those movies weren’t wrong in the least. The gaseous ones are more interesting. Geometries and color combinations beyond human recognition that give something at which to gawk. No perception enhancer needed. Just over that end of the spectrum you’ll find the ones that make you ask, “What the fuck? How does that even make sense?”
The capital, I confess after a few minutes chewing on its rind, was somewhere in the middle.
I approached the planet in a long arc, letting its gravity field to do the work of making me look like a discarded soda can in the street, blowing towards a storm drain. Initially I saw its belly. Brown and sandy. Yay, another one of those planets. I wasn’t expecting to need sunscreen. Coming over into the afternoon area of the planet were the rocky, sparsely vegetated areas. From what I could see where I was anyway. Hopefully I won’t be here long enough to get a full geography lesson.
Then the strangest thing appeared over the horizon. Clearly urban areas began to densely dot the landscape. No surprise, right? But then they got denser, and quick. By the time the area just before night revealed itself to me, the structures morphed into one giant mass that kept growing. And growing.
Turns out the back half of the planet was, for lack of a better term, one big ass building.
I guess Isaac wasn’t far off after all.
Unlike any other city at night, there was not a wondrous display of lights. Blinking towers. Veins of car headlights. Very far apart, I mean very far apart – as seen from space, mind you – there were what I presumed to be landing pads for air slash spacecrafts. I had a feeling there wasn’t much air travel there though. They were brightly lit, but compared to the millions of miles of darkness around them, they were hard to miss.
Maybe I should just land on one, getting out, throwing up deuces just for shits and giggles. I’m sure there would be quite the welcoming party for me.
Round and round I went. The massive chrome dome seemed to have no end. It was rather unordinary for a while. That is until I reached was I supposed was the capitol of the capital. Certainly there was a seat of power at its epicenter. And why wouldn’t it – among endless hectares of composite and steel – have the only massive greenhouse dome? With the risk of sounding exaggerated, it was a small city sized jungle in a bubble. If it weren’t for the ornamental lighting around much of it, I wouldn’t have noticed.
Fifty credits says the only one on that rock to get to regularly enjoy that au naturel air was the Emperor. Haha, “was.” If the news headlines are to be believed.
Normally, I am not adverse to parking at a distance and walking, but holy hell I hoped cab fare is cheap in there. It was going to be like parking on Ellis Island and walking to Nebraska by the looks of it.
The new part of the plan ran as this:
Enter orbit as far away as possible from all the mechanism of the planet, if possible. Once I’m below the radar, I’ll go in low and fast towards the outskirts of town. If all goes well, I won’t be blown out of the sky. The only part of my plan that made me nervous was waiting for nightfall on the far side of the planet.
Watching the sun rise and set has never been my idea of fun. That’s what I did. As I have done many a times in my life. By nature it made me a bit agitated; it meant that I had been awake way too long. Lurking in space, it went faster than I expected to my delight. Perhaps things do happen fast in the capital. If it was nature that happened that fast I could see the use of the dome. Days are short enough as it is, proverbially speaking. I can’t imagine what life would be like seeing the sun come and go far more often.
Dark landings always kinda freak me out. The instruments and terrain rendering helps, but there’s always that psychological need to see what’s whizzing by you at a few hundred meters per second. One estranged rock formation is all it would take to scatter me across the desert. Despite a logistically comfortable few hundred meters between me and the ground I could picture it scraping at the haul. The displays weren’t much help in that regard either. All was green, several hundred feet and all, but the perspective of the image made it look like I was a stone skipping across the pond.
The world around me came into focus as I slowed down. I was at the edge of dawn. There was enough light to make out the forms of things by their shadows on one side, orange glowing face on the other. Timing couldn’t have been better. Knock on wood.
Naturally, I parked behind a large rock outside of town. There was still a bit of what Wade left me to alter my appearance. Risk was it could be stale. Surely everyone on the planet has seen my blurry face by now. This was not like being on Earth where everyone looks reasonably similar. Celebrity lookalikes. Mistaken identities and so on. This was going to be more like being an albino starship among a horde of ants. Whatever that means.
I began my trek to the outskirts of the capital.
Nothing like an early morning walk to the edge of a favela. Never ceases to amaze me, the parallels between human society and others. At the center of several galaxies, the hub of power and wealth, there was a shroud of dirty, impoverished dereliction. Houses, if you can call them that, cobbled together. Detritus everywhere with a seemly order to it. It looked lived in. That probably best describes it. I would venture to guess that it was overpopulated to the point of bodies being piled onto one another in the living areas. That was the one uncommon difference from cities I used to be most familiar with; they were likely all occupied. As I walked on, stepping over a dirty, disheveled squid creature who must not have made it all the way home from the bar, every structure appeared to be occupied.
Oh, Hollywood, how I’ve come to be a star… with several million other people of the same ambition.
In true urban nature, the seediest areas show themselves by those still hustling as the sun comes up. Not a few blocks further, a cockroach looking creature offered me drugs. I kid you not. He looked like a roach without much of a shell and shorter antennae. So I bought some stuff I recognized, at reasonably inflated prices considering where I was. But to my surprise his currency exchange rates became very reasonable once I threatened to remove his thorax if he swapped me fake bills.
A true businessman, er, roach thing, never sleeps.
The buildings grew denser. Though the sun was coming up, the light diminished. Cities are funny like that.
By now the freeze dried and canned goods were no longer holding me over. What didn’t help that was the smell. I know right. Once I got away from the hovels where the smell of shit and decay filled the air, someone was cooking up a storm. I know a market when I smell one. Ever been to New Orleans? As soon as you hit that line downtown you smell it. Oh man, I miss that smell. In some strange way this reminded me of that.
I think I’ve been in sterile ships floating in space too long.
Where there is food there is life. Life picked up. Apparently this was the part of town that didn’t sleep. Never mind the sun being up there somewhere, for all I knew it was the middle of the night on a Friday. Creatures on two legs, four legs, five legs, no legs wandered about.
I was smart enough to take the disguise properly this time. The transition was much more pleasant. In theory it would last longer, too. I hoped anyway.
I picked a place that smelled edible. Dim lights. Tables. Bars. Nooks. Taking one towards the back, I faced the door. A longer distance to cover, yes, but it would give me more time to react to whatever might happen. Call me paranoid.
“What’ll you have?” a slug of a server croaked at me.
I feigned looking at the menu. There was not a chance of me knowing what any of those marks were on the piece of chalky paper like sheet. If it was a newspaper, I probably looked like an ass.
“I’ll have the special,” I said glancing up at it. “And whatever’s on tap.”
“Coming right up.”
Works every time.
Please don’t be bugs and eyeballs. Pragmatically that always works. Practically, ehh, can be a gamble. Definitely don’t recommend the special on Zeflon 5, unless your into that sort of thing.
My order arrived quicker than you could lickety a split. Thank you, Ceres, it was rice and some kind of meat sauce. The beer was pungent. Let’s hope it was as strong as it smelled.
I took a big spoonful of it. Definitely not rice. Puffed rice maybe. Daring to look closer you can probably guess what they were. Committed, I chewed and swallowed.
Nodding my pleasure, I took another spoonful.
Hey, if you cook it right, I’ll eat it.
“…terrorist at large…” I heard coming from a television somewhere.
Adjacent to where I was sitting it was fixed on the wall. I had to crane my neck around to look at it. Regardless of all the time since, they were still running many of the same images Steve showed me. There was no mention of my other recent shenanigans. Not that it was likely they would air pictures of a couple planets run by slave labor.
“… search underway at the alleged home planet for motive…”
Naturally, the news was nothing new.
“…Zalud Enterprises cargo ship explosion in sector 57A…”
Suddenly, the ‘rice’ in my stomach reanimated.
Terrified at what I might see, I craned towards the screen again.
“…hijacked by suspected terrorist and coconspirators believed to be flying directly towards…”
It was the same type of rig that others went off on. The only one we had.
My vision dimmed a little. Then a lot.