Terik wandered through the streets of Seljik; hands in his pockets, jacket collar turned up against the frigid wind that blew up from the dirty sewer: he was the very image of a street-wise Seljikan. His stomach growled as he passed the August diner, but it was with an air of reluctant determination that he pushed the image of greasy food from his mind.
“No more high oil foods,” his doctor had told him. “Your diet is killing you.”
It wasn’t that he was overweight or anything, but there was a dangerous factor in the oil of Seljik that human doctors had yet to explain or understand. It probably had something to do with the fact that most of Seljik’s consumer oil came from the Flabba beast, an alien animal that the first Seljikan colonists bred for food. Whatever the cause, Terik Speedsilver couldn’t eat at the August, but he could at least talk to Cherie –the diner owner and sole cook– for a while; Terik pushed open the doors and entered into relative warmth.
“Whaddaya want, Terik?” Cherie asked from behind the pock-marked, grime-streaked table.
With her spiky red hair and saucy attitude, Cherie had earned the ‘nastiest diner’ award for three years running, but it wasn’t for nothing that they called her the ‘best worst cook’: her food usually brought in a sizable crowd around meal times.
“Just a cup of coffee,” Terik said, smiling weakly. “Black.”
Coffee was one of the few things a diner could buy that didn’t have Flabba-grease in it, but sometimes there were odd-looking specks floating in the dark liquid Cherie claimed was coffee. A minute later a chipped ceramic mug with the faded words ‘World’s Best Dad!’ stenciled on the side appeared on the counter before Terik. A plate with three, stale donuts accompanied the drink, but Terik had promised not to eat any high-grease foods…
Within minutes his coffee was gone and Terik sat there, enjoying the atmosphere of the diner while watching customers slowly trickle into the August as lunchtime approached.
Looking outside, a stranger to Seljik would have hardly known it was lunchtime, passing it off for early morning or late evening, but those that could distinguish themselves –with pride– from those labeled ‘tourists’, knew that it was only the thick smog that arose from the factory sector downtown. Terik had once worked in a factory (before they had switched to a fully-robotic personnel) and knew that within one day enough smoke billowed from the tall stacks of just one factory to ruin the environment of a smaller planet. Thankfully Seljik was ten times larger than Earth (the first planet to be abandoned from overwhelming environment problems) and Flabba beasts helped keep down the amount of carbon monoxide in the air; inhaling it and returning it as helium.
“Hey!” a shout came from across the diner and Terik recognized his old friend, Jix Conan. “Terik!”
As Jix bulled her way through the milling crowd of normal diners, Terik couldn’t help but notice how much she had changed since he had last seen her –three years ago. With hair bleached to a very-pale-verging-on-white-color, perfectly manicured fingernails and skin that was smoother than smooth, Jix didn’t seem to belong to Seljik. But she had the same attitude all Seljikan’s shared: the spirit of belonging; of knowing that no matter who the hell wants you to go, if you want to stay, then they can bloody well try until all Faulk fell.
“Jix,” Terik returned the greeting with a nod. “It’s been a while.”
“Are you hungry?” Jix asked, sitting on a bar stool beside him.
“Nah,” Terik lied. “You?”
“Famished, Cherie, give me a double-large burger.”
Terik watched with envy as Jix bit into the huge monster of a burger that was cooked so ‘rare’ it could’ve gotten up and oozed away –leaving a trail of grease behind. But he couldn’t disobey his doctor, so he ordered another coffee.
“So what’s up in your life now?” he asked, after finishing the second cup. “You been smuggling? Gun-running?”
“Very funny, Terik,” Jix glared at him over her burger. “That’s the old Jix: I’ve got a job as colonist manager on Centre. See the badge?”
Jix tapped a plastic circle on her suit and beamed at Terik. But he only gave her a quizzical look: Centre was the highest-advanced planet in all of Faulk and not one square inch of the planet hadn’t been mapped out and searched thoroughly centuries ago. A colony on Centre was the last thing he expected…other than meeting a Flabba-beast there, of course.
“There’s a colony on Centre?”
“No, they send out colony ships from a base there.”
“And you go with them?”
“Soon will, tomorrow morning we’re leaving for Nifleheim.”
“Nifleheim? But that’s a hundred sectors out of Out!”
“So?”
Terik couldn’t believe his ears: the supposed ‘old’ Jix wasn’t as wild as the ‘new’ one.
“You’re crazy! You and your precious colony will never return!”
“Then why don’t you come along? Your pirate-hunting skills would be a welcome addition to the colony.”
Terik considered two things: one was whether or not he would go with Jix, the other was if she had come all the way to Seljik (two systems away from Centre) just to persuade him to join her colony. The first seemed like a more important considering, but he couldn’t push away the nagging thought that said yes to the second one.
“So will you?” Jix was watching him intently now; her burger was gone and in its place only two pools of yellow grease remained. “You weren’t so bad in an old ‘Ax back in the day.”
Terik fingered the cracked handle to his coffee mug for a few seconds, and then let out a sigh.
“I don’t know, I don’t have anything here on Seljik, and I’d go almost anywhere with you, but…”
“But what?”
“But Nifleheim? You know as well as I do that there’s more than just a few alien trade routes there.”
“We aren’t worried about the aliens, Terik: the company I work with has fitted my ship with everything you can imagine: full cloaking capabilities, 100mm railguns bristling from every nook and cranny of the ship, two whole bays of Sky-scrapers, the works.”
“Sky-scrapers?” everything that had to do with anything about the latest in small space craft interested Terik.
In his days, Sky-scrapers were still prototypes; the HAX-120 (referred to as “The old ‘Ax”) was the preferred vehicle of privateers.
Jix, realizing she’d hit on one of Terik’s few buttons, pressed the matter further.
“Yeah, you can have your own private fighter and personal office onboard; whaddaya say?”
Terik looked over the diner and tried to shut out the growing roar of noise from the diners. Something special held him to this dirty, smelly, dingy place; something that smelled like years of pirate-hunts that always ended with a beer and a burger at the old August. But those days were gone, all the buddies left, Terik’s ‘Ax was gone, the government decommissioned the space-privateers: there was nothing left for Terik on Seljik…
“Alright,” he managed to gasp out. “I’ll do it, how much is in it for me?”
“50.”
“Fifty what?”
“50K for every week we spend in stellar, 20K for the help you give on planets between traveling: room and board are free.”
Terik nodded, that was good enough for him.
“Perfect,” Jix said, rapping her white knuckles on the counter to call for Cherie. “I’ll order a beer to celebrate.”
Your writing style is lovely, making your work easy and enjoyable to read. I wish I had the imagination to make up my own planetary system, too. I really do envy you there 
Gender:
Points: 13307
Reviews: 350