Empyrean Iris Story Collection Vol. 3

On His Own Supply

Thomas stared out the window as they began their descent. He had heard about A1-36, a Rundi exploratory base turned waystation turned den of thieves. It had enough legal traffic going through it that it was hard to police how illegal the place was. He had heard tales of slave rings, underground fighting events, drugs, money laundering and any and all other sort of corruption.

Most of it perpetrated by one of the most infamous players in the business: Noctus.

Thomas wasn't sure what the little Tesraki was supposed to be, drug deal, crime lord, or some version in between.

Adam claimed he was somewhere between Jaba the Hutt and Badger, from Firefly, whatever the hell that meant. He didn't exactly speak geek.

He didn't really speak anything to be honest. He had gotten into drugs at such an early age that a lot of his original interests had sort of been left by the wayside. He liked a lot of things that his brother did, but finding his own way back into his own interests was proving to be harder than he thought it was going to be. He did love action movies, and videogames, so he was hoping something was going to come out of that.

Adam piloted them down through a smoking cloud of steam dropping them through an opening and into an underground tunnel. Thomas could see that infamous wall of fire receding into the distance just before they were lowered into darkness. It was beginning to rain above them splattering their windscreen with tiny droplets of water. Timor, the little Tesraki had given them Noctu's name and location. To say the crew was surprised was an understatement. One of the last times they had seen him was during an attempted prison escape, where he was the only one to do so. Ramirez had thought that he disabled the ship enough that the escaping Tesraki was going to be caught in the middle of space for the rest of his short life, though it seemed Noctus had a lot in common with the common cockroach.

They landed hurriedly disguising themselves with the military issue identity sleeves.

It was pretty much a balaclava that conformed to your face and minutely changed your features so that you looked different.

Adam didn't want to take any chances.

Or so he said.

Thomas was pretty sure he just wanted to try out the cool new technology.

He could hardly blame his younger brother for that.

Sunny was going to be a little harder to conceal, but she pulled a long cloak over her body and the had wrapped her feet and up to her legs so no one would recognize her bright blue. Thomas let himself stand at the back of the group as they headed down the ramp and towards the far opening where a Tesraki was collecting the docking fee. Adam could, of course, have claimed that they were on some sort of GA mission ad so avoided the fee, but that would most certainly alert the underground element of A1-36 to their intentions.

Instead, they paid the exorbitantly high price and made their way inside hurrying down the dark tunnels and past pipes leaking steam. Graffiti on the walls proved that there was plenty of human involvement in this particular syndicate of the criminal underbelly. The other decided to try and start their way in the market and listen around for Noctus. Hopefully someone was going to know where he was.

It was a pretty open plan, and Thomas wasn't sure if it was going to work out for any of them.

If this guy was indeed selling drugs, he doubted, no, he KNEW it wasn't going to be just out in the open like that. There were elements of this place that were legal, and Noctus would hide behind that as his front for bad behavior I the wings.

He kept his eye out for different things.

He supposed it was his distraction from the task of the others that allowed him to catch sight of another young Tesraki hurrying through the market. He was reminded of Timor as he watched, and from there he was reminded of young runners he had met on occasion on earth. Kids from elementary school who had been dragged into the life by an older brother or sister, and asked to move product because they would be less suspicious.