Drifter

Eli took the duffel bag to one of the crew cabins, as it contained his clothes and toiletries. He took the backpack and the gym bag to the workbench. There, he proceeded to empty them. Devices and weapons of every shape and size were placed in the lockers. Most of them bore the hallmarks of Sad’Daki craftsmanship. Few other objects in the universe had such uncanny features.

When he was finished, he grabbed one of the items. The device was a simple hand-held scanner. He began to move the scanner up and down, covering every surface. This process was handled with brutal meticulousness and a sharpened sense of paranoia.

He stepped out of the ship and repeated the process on the outside. When he was done, he gave those areas which he judged to be particularly vulnerable a second pass. Then he set about the task of getting properly settled in.

Eli had owned the ship for about three hours when he was finally ready to launch out of the station’s hangar.

***

Crates of foodstuffs to Yorp. Workers and gear to the mines on Phonat IV. Ammunition and power cells to the new settlements on Eisteg. Pilgrams to the temples on Narain Prime. Soldiers of fortune to the rising conflict on Sadaris. The profits went into restoring the armor plates on his ship’s hull and fixing some of the sketchier repair jobs.

Light cargo hauling work took him a good distance up the Old 1-7. With the profits, he purchased building materials. Cavalier silently orbited a dead moon for about two weeks, while Eli converted the barracks bay into a group of eight little passenger cabins. These cabins were designed in such a way that they would quickly and easily be converted into holding cells.

Passengers to a new settlement on Wilczy. He used the profits to upgrade his ship’s internal security. Mercs to the growing conflict on the largest moon of that world. He used the profits to upgrade his ship’s guns.

He pushed on, heading up a half-forgotten hyperspace lane. A massive nebula stood before him. The Well of Forsaken Souls beckoned the solitary traveler. Its light filled his ship’s viewscreens. The radiance stretched across a vast swath of outer space.

Here, and in places beyond, he would find wonders and horrors enough to satisfy him. Temples to forbidden gods. Deep seas, strange moons, vast wastes, mysterious forests, and sacred deserts. Stars where the light enchants everything they touch. And worlds where the night does not end.

Bathed in the light of the colossal stelar object, Eli searched the alien communications frequencies. He found music from across the cosmos. The lone human allowed the sounds to wash across his awareness, to advance upon the innermost parts of his mind and soul.

This was a joy he had not felt since he strangled the life out of that Sad’Daki warlord. Before that, there was only a blur of pain and loss.

A war fleet of the Atlath empire cruised past. Reveling in its magnificence, he found something like a soaring, marching opera. This he let take hold, offering total surrender to its glory.

***

The next few weeks were spent racing across the nebula, dodging asteroids and navigating around radiation fields. The danger meant that he could charge more. When a client hinted at smuggling opportunities, the profits went into upgrading Cavalier’s engines.

Strange, shifty eyed beings loaded a nondescript pallet into Cavalier’s cargo hold. He took the long way around some of the area’s more organized systems. The profit went into a second set of guns, mounted on the nose near the other set.

***

The bazaar on Sai. A maze of stalls and tents stretched out across an ancient courtyard. Weird beings walked eagerly from one vender to the next. Starships flew overhead, silhouetted against the weak light of a dying star.

A charmingly smarmy looking arms dealer beckoned Eli, “Take a look! Take a look! Take a look! Come, come, come. I don’t recognize you. But that’s good. Good for you! I always give my new customers a discount.”

Eli looked upon the collection of weapons with awe. Swords, knives, and clubs of every shape and size. Guns of every configuration and caliber. Weapons that had been mass produced by governments. Blades and even guns forged in ritual chambers and blessed for use by holy warriors. Ugly things made out of desperation and only suited to those beings who wished to appear insane. The functional and the ornate and the grotesque. Armaments which were at once industrial and medieval. He looked upon them all with the purest joy and deepest reverence.

Eli examined a select fire rifle. It had been identified as a tried-and-true workhorse. Simple design, play between the parts to prevent jams, basic iron sights and a wooden buttstock. No mistaking it, this was the known universes’ equivalent of an AK-47.

He admired the scratches, the wear on the end of the buttstock. A manufacturer’s seal was engraved near the selector switch. It was a depiction of the face of a horned beast, locked in the apex of a mighty roar.

He inspected everything from simple pump-action shotguns to advanced directed energy weapons. A healthy amount of his profits went to this exuberant merchant of death. The arms dealer made a gesture of cheerful parting, “Be sure to come back! I always give my returning customers a discount!”

***

Eli sat on a stool in the middle of a long line of stools. Another eatery in another bustling waystation. He scrutinized the menu, scanning UPCs with a small device, about the size and shape of a thumb drive. His goal was the same one which he always had at such places: to find something that both looked edible and wouldn’t kill him.

The buildings and those beings that wandered the streets pressed in tight. Eli checked to make sure that everything on his person was secured.

He passed the device over the code that sat under a picture of a plate that had a pile of lilac-colored leaves on it. A symbol appeared on the display, a series of connected lines, much the same as letters. A kind of dream logic took hold, as the translator conveyed the sign’s meaning to him. If he ate the stuff, it would kill him, no question about it. The device’s creators feared the ravenous, blue scaled leapers of their home world. Because of this, the symbol was blue.

Next, he tried a bowl of yellow cubes, each flicked with neon-orange deposits, like tiny gemstones. A new symbol appeared, this time it was green. This one wouldn’t kill him, it would only make him shit his brains out.

“Third time’s a charm,” he muttered to himself.

The third time did not turn out to be a charm. Eli was left wondering why there was even a symbol for liquification of the internal organs. The fourth attempt was successful. When the dish arrived, he scanned the food itself, just to make sure. He took a small, cautious bite out of the strip of metallic blue-grey tape.

It tasted like one of those rectangular hashbrowns you get at a fast-food place, only if it had been dipped in mustard.

He sat there, silently eating, eyes moving between his surroundings and one of the many monitors on the walls. He had just about begun to figure out the rules of the ball game he was watching when the two beings sat down on either side of him.

The one on his left had a skeletal frame. In fact, it very much resembled a skeleton, one which was close to human. It was colored like polished chrome. Patches of a translucent substance were stuck all along its frame. This substance was an angry shade of pink, resembled veins or perhaps tumors. Eli realized that they were pulsating ever so slightly.

The other one had a similar body, a skeleton of something not quite human, only this one was colored in a flat shade of black. And it too was covered with those things. This one must have been a member of the same species, but of a different race, as the lumps were a particularly cool shade of blue.

The chrome one spoke, its voice mechanical and high, “Good evening. I’m Kirjen.”

The other one chimed in, its voice mechanical and low, “I’m Jussco. And you are?”

There they were, the names of his contacts.

“Eli Cisneros, captain of the Cavalier,” he said matter of factly.

Kirjen spoke with an approving tone, “Alright, good. You came highly recommended. We’ve got several shipments lined up for you.”

“Shipments that require,” Jussco added, “Discretion. And should that fail, a combination of speed and tenacity.”

Eli took a long swig of his drink before speaking again, “You’re in luck. I’ve got all three.”

***

Eli listened to music while he unloaded the pallet. It took him three songs to get all of the boxes off of it. He placed the case he had been hired to discreetly move on it and put the boxes back on the pallet.

During the journey he poured over the Apogee class’s schematics. Every nook and cranny was taken note of. Then he researched ways to discreetly jam scanner systems.

Three star systems, three inspections, no one bothered to unpack the pallet. Once again, he invested his profits. This time, he had an anti-pursuit mine launcher installed at the rear of the ship, tucked between the fins that housed the main engines and the fuel tanks that fed them.

A cargo run took him the long way around a particularly nasty sector. No passengers, just the cold and distant lights.

Eli went to his little room. He inspected the weapon rack, which contained his favorite pieces. He opened his footlocker, moved a few things, removed a small, void black obelisk. A column of sinister symbols were etched into each face.

Without hesitation, he took a potent stimulant and stripped to the waist. He placed the thing on the ground in the cargo hold and labored to direct all of his hatred at it. Chants which were beyond the Tadvash’s ability to translate escaped his mouth.

He arose, proceeded to dance and perform strange rituals, casting those very curses his enemy had taught him back in their faces. He began to hear wondrous music, although none of his devices were turned on. When the frenzy reached its apex he blacked out, awakening hours later, cold and wide eyed.