No Shelter Among the Stars

Chapter 7- The Theater

Music blasted and pounded against walls made of starship pieces. At a glance, Tasla could see parts of at least eight completely different ships making up the walls, floors and roof of the building. Six floors surrounded a central arena. A large bar was build into one of the walls of each floor. Most of the liquor was homemade mixtures of whatever the owners could get their hands on as it passed through Black Mary's to be sold or smuggled elsewhere. Names for the drinks were almost meaningless since nothing tasted the same on any given day.

Criminals and travelers dressed in modified flight suits or cannibalized military gear or both pushed past each other throwing down silver coins for ceramic tankards overflowing the Black Mary's finest. The regulars had the handful of unbroken stools riveted into the floor. Everyone else was standing, pressed tight against each other. Large speakers were bolted into every odd corner, pounding noise into the crowd and through the walls of reclaimed space junk. The music shifted every couple moments, jumping from world to world, from culture to culture. The smell, of sweat, blood, alcohol, and human waste hung over the building, the mist from the artificial atmosphere gave the smell physical form and it soaked through clothes and hair, permeating threads and fibers like a virus.

Tasla didn't mind the smell. His heightened senses made it more and less than what it was. If he focused, he could dissect the stink around him as impartially as a man looking at germs through a microscope, but he had no interest in such things. He had no interest in the tankards of blended alcohol littering the crowded floors and piling across the filthy bar counters either. Alcohol was far to weak to have a real effect, or hold on him.

He had gotten drunk once when he had first escaped the jungle hellhole they'd all been imprisoned in. It had taken days, and when it finally had its hold on him, he had found it incredibly underwhelming. He spat, as if removing the taste of bad experience from his mouth. His spittle landed on a woman trying to push past him. She didn't notice.

He felt a sudden tremor run down his spine. His body was begging for sensation. Nerves and receptors across his body were dull and lifeless. He could feel the world around him like looking at the sky while underwater. It was all distant. and it had been for weeks now. He had no adventure, no release. The people pushing around him were shadows. He touched them and they were no more stimulating than furniture. He was a dead man lost in the mists of the dead. His fingers twitched and reached for his pistols, but they weren't there. The Theater like many of the pubs in the Rat Quarter of Black Mary's had a strict policy against weapons. He swallowed a taste of bile and pushed his way to the center of the building.

The center of the Theater, was a massive cage with bars of rolled iron. Layers of rust coated the black metal and flaked off, staining the floor. This cage was why hundreds of people flocked to this particular bar day and night. Anything else at the Theater could be found anywhere else, but nobody else in Black Mary's could boast the kind of entertainment that the Theater offered. Others had tried, building their own cages or fighting pits, but the best fighters always came here. Touching the rusted black bars sent a tickle through Tasla's fingertips.

He had entered the Theater, making a deal with himself that after attending to his own needs he would search for a pilot, as he had been assigned, but just one touch of rusted, rolled iron erased all thoughts from his mind. He was a breath away from what he needed. It pumped with his heartbeat. His need was so powerful that his body was already inventing punishments for not satisfying it. He could feel a headache stirring towards the front of his skull, and tears welling up in his left eye. A lump lifted into his throat, a feeling akin to grief. He felt a tap on his shoulder.

He grabbed the hand and spun around, but he was still in control. He didn't try and kill the man who had tapped him.

"...have my hand back?" asked the man. Tasla had missed the beginning of the man's question, but he let go anyway.