Empyrean Iris

Chapter 34

Dr. Krill was alone in the darkness. The lights of the room had been dimmed for the night, and out in the hall, red light spilled down from the emergency lights and into glowing red pools on the floor: all to avoid ruining the human's night vision or circadian rhythm.

He was left alone with his work, though his work was rather slow at the moment, annoyingly hinging on a call back from this doctor Kedd.

Without anything to think about, he was left to worry about the humans down on the surface.

He could see it out the small viewing window in his office, just below where the ship was docked on the Noctopolis LEO station -- a giant glassy ball of darkness cut across with a billion small pinpricks of light and scoured with massive cracks from where deep crust mining had scarred the face of the planet.

He knew a little of the history of Noctopolis. It was a planet in orbit around a very distant star, to the point where the light that kissed it during the day was no more than the light of a very bright moon. It had originally been terraformed when the Tesraki discovered great deposits of precious metals on its surface.

The entire atmosphere of the planet was completely synthesized and was constantly in a state of recycling as there were no biological methods to keep the atmosphere stable.

Due to its location on the outskirts of the MilkyWay galaxy, it was considered a border moon, and thus under little to no influence of GA policing. The only GA presence on the planet that could really be considered permanent was the presence of the Turma Supermax Detention Facility, but even that was hardly monitored by the GA and was generally given down to control by the locals, who were no more than glorified mob families and drug syndicates.

All of that put together made this planet a hub for illicit activities.

The greatest hub being that of the slave trade, a topic of discussion, which doctor Krill knew little about other than the injuries that its unfortunate participants garnered.

No one was entirely sure who was in the market for slaves.

There were rumors that the burg and the Prodigum were the most likely culprits, though evidence of such practices had been found in Tesraki factories across the galaxy.

With the Tesraki, it was easy to guess what the slaves were being used for: forced labor in their factories or mills, or shops, but as for the rest, it was left to only chilling speculation. No one knew enough about the Burg to make any guesses as to what they would need slaves for, but the Prodigum?

Well, they were large, hideous scavengers, known for their consumption of dead and rotting material both plant and animal based. This made them neither a predator or a planet based lifeform, but sort of made them more of a fungus, though they hardly resembled it. In this way some assumed maybe they were buying the slaves and then killing them as some sort of exotic form of food, though nothing had ever been proven.

Dr. Krill didn't like to think about the alternatives, especially not when it came to a discussion about his humans.

The idea of them rotting away on some unknown planet subdued enough not to fight back like humans were so prone to doing, made him shiver.

He turned in a sharp circle eyeing the images of the eyes he had transferred from the office.

Whatever Captain Vir had said, Krill was sure he had seen something in them earlier, something he had yet to explain, but knew that to do with the missing eyes and the missing humans, but what that connection was he could not guess.

When he turned back around he nearly leapt across the intervening space upon seeing the red comms light blinking on his desk.

Vrul were never meant to leap in any sort of fashion, so he nearly brained himself on the desk as he jumped forward. He didn't have time to wonder why he had done something so unusual for an alien like himself and simply pressed his digit against the little blinking light in order to accept the call.