Waterstrider

Spacedock, Tseludia Station, Pantheonic Territory, Thirdmonth, 1634 PTS

As the airlock door opened, the first thing I noticed was the stench.

It is not as noticeable on a ship, where the small compartments allow for the air to be easily and regularly filtered and recycled. On a structure as large as Tseludia Station, the odor of Staiven body emanations is rampant. I’ve heard that few races can detect the scent of miasma, though at that moment I could not be particularly happy about my own ability to do so. It was as if a wall of musk slammed into me, and I was distracted for several moments as I was forced to adjust to the radically different air.

Soon, however, my eyes finally registered my surroundings. Tseludia’s docks are designed in a rather organized manner, far more functional than the elegant architecture I am so used to from my own culture.

The passageway was roughly twenty meters wide, stretching far off in either direction along one of the station’s six spokes. The walls and floor were composed of a variety of materials, welded and forged together in a bizarre way with seemingly no attention paid to aesthetics at all. It almost seemed as if it would be flimsy, though I do not doubt it was composed of various supermaterials for very specific purposes.

Though their science lacks in various other fields, the material science of the Staiven people far surpasses that of my own. The patchwork design of the hallway irked me, but I let the feeling pass. When visiting foreign territory, one must adjust to their peculiarities. It is not as if I could have expected a blind species to care about visual aesthetics, after all. The fact that the station has lights at all showed how much effort they put in to accommodate alien races such as my own.

The passage was busy, filled with passerby of various races, some of which I had never seen before. The other passengers who had been on the ship with me for the seven-year journey were still blearily stumbling around as they finished awakening from suspended animation. While they shambled around in the hibernation bay, I had made my way to the exit airlock, easily dodging the line that would inevitably start to form behind me.

Suspended animation technology does not function on my people, so I had spent most of the long voyage in meditation and training. For most of the voyage, the crew had taken shifts to be awake, and I had little to do.

Standing before me was a Staiven official dressed in a tight fitting uniform.

From a distance, or if one squinted their eyes, a Staiven looks somewhat like my own people. Two feet, two arms, a head with two eyes, a mouth and a nose. When one looks closely, the differences become all too apparent, however.

They have yellowish skin that builds up in flaky clusters that fall off as they go about their day. Their hands and feet operate via hydraulic pressure rather than muscle, and white chitin plating covers all of their joints, as if they had small armored pads on their elbows, shoulders, and finger joints. The ‘eyes’ of the Staiven were solid spheres of a single color, but rather than organs for sensing, they were used by the race to filter miasma from the atmosphere and collect it. I had spent a great deal of time with Staiven over the past seven years, and had long since gotten over my instinctive revulsion to their appearance.

The security officer’s eyes were a deep, brilliant vermilion hue. On instinct, I locked gaze with them as he inspected me, turning to the captain of the ship I had arrived on. They spoke for a bit in the Staiven language, and I had difficulty following their conversation. I had put effort into learning the language, but it had yet to pay off.

I merely waited until I was addressed.

After some discussion the official turned to me. My eyes once again immediately snapped to the brilliant red spheres within his orbitals, but I forced my gaze away. In his hands the officer appeared to be fondling an oddly shaped gray object, which I quickly recognized as the preferred interface device that his people used to access computing systems.

“So,” he spoke suddenly, squinting his eyes at me. “A Seiyal taking the long journey, direct from Canvas by way of Staive, eh? Any relationship to the Hadal family?”

His words were clearly directed at me, and they tore me out of my observations as I heard him speak in my own language. I supposed it made sense that they would assign someone multilingual to duty in the docks. As he spoke, I could sense his attention drift towards the sheathed sword on my waist.

“No, no relation. I merely wished to start a new life.” He grunted in response, continuing to input and read information from his interface.

“I’ll take that into consideration,” he sneered. Breath spilled out of his air sacs, causing me to cough from the stench. “Any intention of using that thing? I’m aware that your people still prefer to use such… implements.”

I glanced down to my sword, my hand having reflexively moved to touch its handle. I could sense his disdain for our ‘barbarity’, as he doubtless saw it. The reality as I saw it was that a blade in the hand of a Seiyal martial artist is far more dangerous than a gun in the hand of any soldier. I doubted he saw it the same way.

“Don’t worry, it is a ceremonial blade. I have no intention of using it for violence,” I said.

This was a lie, and both of us knew it. However, it was not his job to police such things. His job would become much more difficult were he to try and dispute it. It was true that the blade was ceremonial, however. As the heirloom of the Downpour Sect, it had seen use as a symbol far more often than as a weapon.

“I see. Name?” he asked. In response I recited a pseudonym I had already decided upon.

“Cyrus Yu.”

I had known a Cyrus once. We had been friends. In the end, I had to kill him. The official marked my words down and let me go. The immigration protocols on Tseludia were very lax, but of course it was not as if such things could ever be controlled by the weak Staiven government. They had expanded far too much, accepted too many alien races into their territory to ever hope of being able to keep track of people’s movements. Particularly since they lacked birth records, it was far too simple to just lie to them as I was doing now.

“Noted. I sincerely hope you weren’t lying about your affiliation, Mister Yu. We get far too many of your type, and of those, plenty die young. I hope you won’t be the same.”

My eyes met his blank orbs once more. It was a habit I was unlikely to break.

“I’m not young.”

Hearing me, he laughed with a dark expression and waved me on. I left the discussion at that, finally able to enter the station proper. Merging into the crowd, I followed the general flow of traffic as I attempted to navigate out of the port and into the city area. The task was more difficult than I would have anticipated, as the passages were blank and wholly unlabeled. In the end I was forced to stop a nearby Telaretian passerby and ask in broken staivish for directions.

It took me half an hour to navigate out of the tight corridors of the spacedock and into the greater habitat. Tseludia was designed to feel like a place where one could be comfortable, more like the open expanses of a planet than the claustrophobic interior one would expect from an orbital habitat. It was a place designed for people to live their entire lives within. To me, it was merely the first place I could imagine myself feeling comfortable within for the first time in years. Finally free to explore this new land, I quickly found my feet taking me to familiar territory.

There are few places in this great starfield where one can truly relax. For me, nothing can compare to the experience of a warm meal in a Seiyal inn.

The inn I had found was a beautiful building, with a wooden signboard where the name of the inn was inscribed in Seiyin script gracing the top of the door frame. The White Sun was very unusual, designed in such a way that it appeared as if to be constructed of wood, though that was undoubtedly just an aesthetic.

Any wood in this solar system would have to be imported, and was far too expensive to use as construction material for a building. Because of its appearance the inn stood out from the other buildings nearby, an elegant construction of curves and complex mandalas that did not match at all with the blocky patchwork of the surrounding buildings.

As I walked into the open door, the sound of soft music was audible through a hidden speaker, and the tables were sparsely filled with other Seiyal, all speaking in the soft tones of my native language. A small smile lit up my face as I found myself a seat at an empty table, ordering myself some wine and snacks.

The food was delightful. The taste of my homeland’s cooking is always enough to touch the heart of a vagabond such as myself. Suddenly, as I took a sip of my wine, I felt the touch of someone’s attention pointed down upon me from the second floor balcony. I swiveled my head to match their gaze, and my eyes met with those of a middle aged man seated alone at a small table.

He was a sei, bearing pale features and blonde hair, but his face was rugged and weathered with age. His eyes were surrounded by wrinkles, his face scarred in thick lines at various points. He wore traditional robes in a green and black pattern. A thin beard covered his chin, and as I looked at him, he gave me a wry smile and turned his attention back to his meal. Had his inner energy been weak, his gaze would not even have registered to me. I moved my own gaze as well, hoping he would not take any more notice of me.

There was little chance that news of me had made it this far out, but if my luck was poor enough someone might recognize me. Taking another sip of my wine, I turned back to the meal, making sure to savor every taste. I would need to get to work soon.

Staiven: [The original native species of the planet Staive, the Staiven were genetically altered by a faction of ascendants to appear vaguely similar to humanoid forms. Despite their misleading appearance, Staiven are actually colonies formed of billions of microorganisms. They are genderless, but some of the various body types they can have appear visually similar to the genders that many humanoid races have. Staiven process miasma naturally, condensing and storing it within their ‘eyes’.]