Waterstrider

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

Of all the districts, the fourth was certainly the least inviting. It was usually referred to as Otan, which from Kalthen’s limited knowledge meant something like ‘smoke’ in the Exid tongue. He cared little about such things.

The ‘beetles’, as he called them, reminded him of the small scurrying insects that Gardener Arvajott had once placed upon Celah in the years after the fall. Kalthen himself had never even been to his people’s ancestral homeland, of course. Still, he had seen the creatures in lessons and films he had watched growing up, so he had a fair understanding of the world’s fauna. The Exid looked just like the small insects, though quite a bit larger. Roughly four feet long and covered in a opalescent chitin shell, the aliens did indeed resemble insects or crustaceans.

They were an Osine client race, and as such they had formed naturally, lacking any particularly unique ashatic interactions. Even worse, they were an insectoid race with a hive culture. It was disgusting. The only insectoid race Kalthen ever wished to deal with was the Korlove. In his opinion, the Exid could not be considered anything but barbaric serfs, scuttling around as they underwent the tasks their hive queens had asked of them.

As he thought over the insectoid sibling race of his own people, his gaze shifted to the small Korlove squad flanking him as they made their way deeper into the district. Soldier Kande and her team were carefully examining all of the swarming beetles for weapons or traces of hostile intent, but the workers just continued in their task, heedless of the group’s presence. There was little need to be wary of the aliens, though Kalthen did not blame the squad. They were well-trained soldiers of the Heirs. The thought lit up Kalthen’s expression as he remembered that they were at the moment fully under his command.

Otan was the largest industrial district of Tseludia Station, as well as the home of its Exid population. Worker Exid were born in droves and lived short lives, and because they had not much of a soul to speak of, nobody particularly had an issue with the working conditions their queens had them laboring under in the factories of Otan.

Because of their presence serving as a near unlimited source of cheap and disposable labor, conditions in this district had steadily grown worse and worse. In the end, the government had only stepped in to require the factories to limit their emissions because it was spreading to other districts. The solution chosen in the end had simply been to use filters to clean the air, which would be discarded into space after they were overfilled. Even still, the air in the district tasted noticeably grittier than in the others, and Kalthen hated the place. Still, anywhere corporate greed was allowed to run so rampant was a good place to earn money, and so the Heirs of Ottrien had been making a play to take over the district’s underworld.

Kalthen shambled along the bridge, having to step carefully around the shifting tides of beetles in order to keep his footing. The ground was slick with oily residue, and he nearly tripped multiple times before he arrived at his destination.

The safehouse was located on the third floor from the top of the stack, accessible from the small alley between a residence and a Celan restaurant. Both of the two buildings were rare in the district, as the Exid laborers slept in the factories and only ate nutritional mush, but the factories had inspectors and supervisors, and they needed places to live and eat.

Kalthen strode down the alley, stepping carefully around the overfilled dumpster to an iron hatch next to a large vent. Resting on the hatch’s control board was a glyph slate, and Kalthen idly reached out to trace the passcode into it.

As he traced the glyph his uncle had given him, he mused to himself how silly it was to hide the safehouse like this. While it made sense to locate it near one of the only sources of Celan-edible food in the district, that just made it trivially easy for their enemies to guess where it might be.

The hatch slid open with a hiss of escaping air, and Kalthen strode through, allowing his shoulders to arch back as he introduced more confidence to his walk.

Past the hatch was a dimly lit corridor opening to a few rooms on either side and on the end. The corridor dog legged awkwardly to the right so as to pass around the apartment it was built behind. He ignored the side rooms, moving with due exigence towards the far opening. The squad of soldiers followed in step behind him.

The main room of the safehouse held a silicate dining table on one end, and multiple faux-leather couches on the other, where a few soldiers were quietly lounging. At the table, a Korlove spymaster was quietly discussing something with a Merris man.

The man was tall and fit for his race, though even then he was shorter and skinnier than Kalthen himself who was slender for a Jobu. The Merris were a rare race in this part of the galaxy, with most choosing to remain on the planet the Staiven had granted use of to Celan refugees. They had similar skin tones and hair coloration to that of the Jobu, but were much smaller, closer to the size of a Seiyal. Despite the limitations of their strength and muscle mass, the Merris certainly outshone the Jobu in the fields of dexterity and reflexes. In particular, they had enhanced minds, capable of quick thinking and analysis of their senses. To Kalthen the trait seemed almost magical in effect, and the man before him had refined it to its limit.

Triezal was something of a mystery. Two years before, he had arrived to the station on a ship, claiming he had been sent by the Heirs’ patron in order to provide them assistance. The Leader had quickly assigned him very difficult tasks, and Triezal always accomplished them swiftly and without error. It was as if tasks such as accounting, extortion, and even assassination were all trivial matters for him. If Kalthen’s Uncle was the Leader’s right hand, Triezal was his left. To make matters worse, he was barely a year and a half Kalthen’s senior in age.

Triezal often wore odd clothing that seemed to be thrown together from finds in a thrift store, but he seemed to have a preference for jackets and factory worker pants. He had long hair, dyed blue and tied up with a yellow cord as if he were some punk from the bygone later days of Celah. A yellow blindfold was tied around his eyes even though Kalthen knew he wasn’t blind. All in all, the ensemble made the man look ludicrous in Kalthen’s estimation. Upon hearing Kalthen’s entry, Triezal turned to him with a smile.

“Little brother! What a pleasant surprise.”

The man stood, welcoming Kalthen in with a gracious, mocking smile on his face. Kalthen could almost envision the mocking gaze shrouded behind the blindfold. A pleasant surprise?

“Sure it is,” muttered Kalthen. He then spoke up louder, bowing towards the other man. “It is a joy to make your acquaintance once again, senior Triezal.”

Triezal laughed boisterously, sliding out a chair on the table for Kalthen. The two sat, and Kalthen turned back toward soldier Kande’s squad.

“Kande, I want you here for this. The rest of you may rest until the morning.” The Korlove dipped their heads in acquiescence, and their squad leader went over to one of the stools designed for Korlove, pulling it up to the table beside him.

“Perfect,” said Triezal. “We might as well get started right now. Tell me about this Seiyal the Leader wants us to find.”

He had rested his elbows on the table, steepling his fingers in a rather pretentious manner. His head was angled towards Kalthen as if there was any possible way he could see through that blindfold. For a moment Kalthen played with the idea of ignoring the other man, but soon discarded it. If he caused trouble, Triezal might inform the Leader about it, and then Kalthen’s hopes of repairing the damage the thief had done to his reputation would be dashed completely. He roughly recounted what he knew about the thief, with occasional assistance from Kande.

The Korlove woman was rather serious at all times, he had come to realize. He had spent the past day moving around with her as they spoke to informants from across the districts, but she had yet to break her frigid demeanor. As their tale was ending, Triezal paused in thought upon hearing of how the Seiyal had vanished.

“Extant arts? No, those should not be this powerful in the core formation realm… If not that…” His hands moved back to retie the knot holding his hair, as if nervous. “Kalthen, what did you say he stole again?” Kalthen scratched his head.

“Various things, I wasn’t able to see what was in his sack. He was carrying some odd stone in his hand, though. It was black and glowing, about this large,” Kalthen said, demonstrating the size with his hands. “I couldn’t recognize it. Wasn’t even aware we had something like that, actually.”

A look of shock covered Triezal’s face. He suddenly stood up, slamming his chair back into the wall as he began to laugh in a hysterical manner. It was very much at odds with the manner Kalthen had seen the man present himself previously. The laughter ceased suddenly, and a very composed expression filled Triezal’s face.

“No wonder the Leader moved me onto this. Damn.” He lifted the blindfold, rubbing his eyes with one hand. “Shadows… this is such a clusterfuck. We need to get it back, and we need to do so very fast, Kalthen.”

Kalthen was confused. He knew the thief had taken something valuable, as well as the loss of face the robbery had symbolized, but wasn’t this reaction a bit much?

“Triezal…” The man turned to face him. “Just what was it that he took?” Triezal shrugged, lying back down with the relaxed demeanor Kalthen generally expected to see from the man. He had certainly composed himself quickly.

“I don’t actually know what it is. All I know is that the Epon want it, and desperately. Years back a courier ship was sent to acquire it and take it back, and it should finally be arriving soon. If they find out that we lost it… It doesn’t matter what we need to do to find it, so long as it’s in our possession before they arrive. If not, the Heirs might not exist at all for much longer.”

Kalthen became pale, and from the corner of his eye he could see the hairs on Kande’s legs had raised up. He chuckled. It was good to see that she actually could show emotion.

He leaned his seat back, staring up at the room’s tile ceiling, like a schoolboy bored in class. He could be considered at least partially at fault for letting the thief escape, and if they weren’t able to capture him… perhaps it would be wise to look into what ships would be departing the station in the coming months.

Exid: [One of the rare mortal races who developed naturally, the Exid are a race consisting of multiple different castes of organism, with only the Hive Queens being sapient. Each Hive Queen controls a vast swarm of crustacean-like worker Exid, who respond to her every will as they lack independent thought. The Exid are an Osine client race simply because they arose in the territory of the Fal a Dein and were deemed unsuitable for harvest due to their particular nature. As they lack any sort of progression system or an impressive technological base, there are largely ignored by their overlords, and many have spread out across inhabited space. Worker Exid are several feet long and roughly one and a half feet tall. They are covered in a curved shell, and are a pearlescent white when their exoskeleton is clean. They have a pair of claws at the front that they use to grip objects. The Hive Queens look similar but much larger, with a distended abdomen used for giving birth to mass quantities of workers.]