Chapter Two

When Kor was young, before his seventh cycle when he'd been sent to the agoge to begin his training, his father would sometimes take him to a tiny curio shop on the edge of their village. Travelers and traders would bring items from all corners of the dominion there, and the shop's proprietor would place them on the sturdy wooden shelves next to handthrown Menelaun pottery, ceramics, and blades. Incense, books, novelty holograms, small statuary depicting everything from saints to pop icons. At first glance, things were stocked in a rambling shamble of nonsense by the store owner, an old battle-blasted soldier that was more vat grown limb than original. His eyes held madness, but he was kept sane there.

Left alone to peruse the inventory as his father and the shop owner talked war history and epic feats, Kor's child mind soon began to see the hidden whirls of logic within the swirling chaos. Shape, size, color, novelty. Origin, use, age, material. Texture, true purpose, resonance, authenticity. There was a metaphorical rhyme to the place, if not a literal. 

Tisbel's shop, though. Tisbel's shop was nothing like that.

No, this shop was the kind of thing no sane mind could devise. It was like looking into a star for far too long as you pondered whether a creation such as the celestial fusion reactor could think, feel, or communicate with lesser, biological life. In short, they were both madness.

Ten meters wide at its greatest point, and so deep that Kor couldn't tell where it ended, the store seemed to contain a little bit of everything. A bluish haze of tobacco smoke hung over it all, the whirls and swirls reminding Kor of that first shop.

Metal racks, shelves, armory fixtures. Wires, cybernetic implants, hunks of formless biowaste. Great blocks of matter for printers, nanomachines, construction equipment. Sidearms, long arms, anti-vehicle, power armor and mech weaponry so powerful they could be used to take out entire fire teams. It was enough to start a small war, Kor figured, as long as you had enough creds to trade. 

Laren Qivan had done well. This was exactly the place Kor needed for what he had planned.

"Said your Menelaun needed to wipe his boots before he came in." Like out in the hall, Tisbel's disinterested voice came from everywhere, same as the voice in the street that levied Laren's unexpected fine. He figured Tisbel's indifference to be calculated. No one with this amount of inventory didn't care.

Kor grimaced as he mimed cleaning his boots on the floor just inside the closed door, unsure if it was to Tisbel's satisfaction. Fuck it. Most boot material didn't collect biowaste, anyway.

This was all poise and posturing. She knew what he was and, like any creature in the wild, needed to prove herself capable of protecting marked territory against the newly arrived apex.

Kor didn't mind. He'd made an implicit deal, and his word was his bond. Honor depended on a soldier's word, and whether it had the ring of truth and promise of follow through to back it.

Eyes sliding for a moment over the armaments laid out on the surface of the central table, he made his way down the shop aisle. He stopped, looked to the heavyset woman strapped into the oracle's seat planted in the shop's center. Tisbel.

"Don't act like you've never seen a woman before, Menelaun."

Kor grunted, continued down the aisle in Laren's wake. He kept his eyes off the shop keeper as much as he could, not wanting to seem too curious. Not that he particularly cared about who in particular he was doing business with.

"Sorry. Long cryo, and they only let you sleep one to the bed."

He realized now that she wasn't heavyset, the support mechanisms only made her seem that way at a glance. If anything, the opposite was true. Tisbel's wasted form was reclined back in her gel couch, wires and tubes coming from hardlined jacks attached across her form. A particularly thick nest of them sprouted from her cranium like errant locks. Kor wasn't sure what they called it here on Varis I, but Menelauns had their own name for the array: Medusa Interface. The ones their pilots used were noninvasive, utilized surface reads of the brain waves. The same couldn't be said of Tisbel's.

"Your friend says you're a big buyer, Menelaun. If that's true, you're in luck. Have a seat and we'll see what we can see."

Kor and Qivan both went over. Each pulled out one of the lightweight, neon orange folding chairs near Tisbel's reclining body and took a seat. While they did, Kor caught his first look of his guide's face. The kid was ugly. Memorably so. Dark, puffy eyes, thin lips, no chin, with a mashed in nose. Qivan quickly tugged down his mask, hid his face away.

Kor didn't blame him. Tisbel might have the snakes on her Medusa Interface, but Qivan had the looks. Not that Kor looked much better by universal standards. 

The chair groaned in vocal, objective protest as the soldier sat on the edge, leaned forward. "Need protective gear, personal defense with a range of options: close quarters, room clearing. Everything I need for research as well. Database access for past stories, Intel drops, contacts."

"All business." Tisbel's face remained impassive as she spoke, her mouth closed and silent, as her voice emanated from somewhere in the room. "I like it. Need an assistant? Not even picking up any pings off your personal network."

"Only for research and communication. No autonomy, either. I want to give it a task and not have it exceed parameters." Kor waved a dismissive hand. "And no networking on the gear. I want good, old-fashioned dumb gear. Engagement decisions, weapons free calls, firing orders are mine. Always."

"Sometimes I forget just how touchy you Menelauns can get about AI." As she spoke, there was the sound of smoothly oiled wheels sliding on recessed tracks hidden in the ceiling, accompanied by the near silent whirring of electronic motors. The noises receded to the back of the shop. "This may take a moment."

Kor grunted, gave a ghost of a smile. "Deal with us much?"

"More than you'd think. I am, after all, the premier purveyor of fine goods from across the sector. I outfit a few different merc and sec companies, even a skip tracer, so I see them from time to time. Confidentiality is a feature when you're dealing with me, though." She paused, and the whirring died away for a moment before quickly resuming. It seemingly grew in volume as it began to track back.

"I don't tend to hear many requests for unnetworked weapons and equipment. Let's just say your race stand out amongst the crowd."

"Yeah," said Kor, "we're regular diamonds in the rough."

"Know you'll need to be licensed for this, right?"

The chair groaned, gave voice to his own internal protest. Licensing. It was something he'd read about, but was an abstract concept. Menelauns were authorized to carry whatever armaments they were certified and cleared for use on. Could they break it down, could they stay within a certain percentile of accurate shots, did they know their tactical marks for a kill in close combat? Kor wasn't looking forward to having to jump through the hoops. Not that it would be a problem - he was certified on all the standard Menelaun loadout. But his timeframe would have to be revised by days.

Although, he could rob her. Tisbel clearly was feared by the locals, but Kor didn't see any defense. And she was right there. Quick twist of his hands and her jacked in neck would break.

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Continue with Part Six

I think there's only about two days worth of back material, then I'll be on a per week basis. So, keep an eye out for when these post again. I haven't decided if I'm going to post anything inbetween, because I'm pretty sure no one wants to read about my theories on storytelling, and so on, or the inherent structure of storytelling. My eyes are already rolling back in my head as I think of the different subjects I could cover, so I'm not exactly sure if any kind of small audience I have wants to read about them.

If you do, though, leave a comment! Maybe I could put something together in my downtime.

Previous Posts:

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four