Chapter 1 – Until Debt Do Us Part #3
I sighed and continued onward, up the half-set of stairs that led to the hallway to Trident's office. On my way there, I spotted Khrelen in a corner with his rus’a, her fronds all over him so he was practically swallowed up, and I snorted.
Good for him. At least one of us was coming out on top tonight – although he definitely wasn't on top with a rus’a, and that was the way he liked it.
The hall to Alet Trident's office was long and, as always, it was occupied.
Everyone wanted to see her, and she liked to keep them waiting, so a haphazard line had formed in the hallway as it did most nights.
At least I had a summons, although if I thought about that for too long, it made the contents of my stomach curdle.
"Hey, pardon me – Oh, sorry about the tail.
Yup, just on my way now." I squeezed my way past the line, ducking my head to soften the edge of the sharp stares and flashing my dancer's smile when I thought it would get me anywhere.
Which it usually did. Alet herself had said she'd never have offered me a job without that smile.
So, really, I could handle a few irritated huffs, and even when the brin who had to be all elbows and sharp teeth snarled in my direction.
"Sorry about that," I repeated, flattening my back against the cold metal wall of the corridor as I edged past the gelatinous bulk of a nyaan who I was pretty sure had lost a bit of money at one of the gambling tables in the den last week.
They sucked their sides in as I squeaked past, recoiling and flushing a disgusted mauve as I dared edge into their personal bubble.
When you were nyaan, and you were basically an oozing sac of translucent goo plus two brains floating about, your personal bubble extended pretty far in a lot of directions – which meant you didn't have a hell of a lot of interest in having an oily human coming near your…
skin? Was it skin, I wondered not for the first time, or was it hardened…
insides, like the layer that formed on milk?
Was skin, my skin, basically also… milk skin?
Why was I thinking so much about skin tonight?
The nyaan made a wet, burbling sound that was nearly lost in the rumble of the air filtration system overhead, so their translator was a bit delayed in processing the glurbles into words.
I got the gist all the same. "Yeah, yeah," I intoned, as the nyaan's chip helpfully chirped out something along the lines of, 'Go excrete your skin oil elsewhere, lesser being!
This one has been waiting to speak with the proprietor all evening.
' "Yeah," I repeated, backing away as I edged closer to Trident's door while holding my hands in front of me in a placating gesture.
"I know you have. But I'm an employee and she said she needs to see me right away.
I won't be long, promise!" My elbow banged against the edge of her door, a sharp flash of pain shooting up the bone.
I hissed, and then the door behind me also hissed, and it slid open.
The nyaan flared a deep red, looking very much like a blister, and I ducked my head again as a chorus of complaints rose to a crescendo down the hall.
"It'll be quick!" I promised, and I shot them all my sunniest, cheeriest, and – my secret trick – stupidest smile, before stumbling backwards through Trident's door and slamming it shut.
I even wrenched the wheel to its closed position for good measure. I didn't trust the way the nyaan had been pulsating with fury by the time I'd cut the whole line, and I wouldn't put it past gelatinous goop to decide they were going to interrupt.
I turned and fixed that same trademark smile on Alet Trident, who was sitting in the middle of her nest of tech, one eyestalk pointing toward me while the other tracked three hovering screens, a few of her hands flicking them around her.
Her legs were folded neatly as she perched in the bowl of pillows that was her office and possibly her bedroom too.
Trident's gray skin gleamed wetly in the flickering blue and green lights from the projected displays, which swirled around her as if they were caught in a whirlpool.
"Sit," Trident said, her voice reedy and thin as usual. The eyestalk pointed in my direction twitched before swivelling to face in a different direction. One of her gray arms gestured halfheartedly to a round pillow strewn just outside her perimeter of screens.
I didn't need to be told twice. I sat, scooting closer so that I was just outside the flashing colours of blue and green. I straightened my back, squared my shoulders, and fixed my smile firmly in place.
I'd practiced this. I could ask for a raise or, alternatively, beg for financial mercy.
I'd tried to set this meeting a week ago, but she was busy dealing with the influx of travellers to Yellow Fin station and overhauling one of the adjoining gambling dens ahead of some big sporting event that was coming up.
If she had time now, and hadn't started with an invoice of where I currently sat with my debt to her, I'd take my shot.
"Alet Trident," I began, forcing my voice to a confident and bright tone I knew she liked.
I'd practiced this. I had it, no matter how flustered and off I'd been earlier in the night.
We had history, Alet and I, and I could lean on that to get what I needed and, by getting what I needed, I could also get her what she needed (namely, more credits).
"I know where I stand right now financially, and it's not because I'm not doing the work.
But there's a disconnect between what I'm offering and how I'm being compensated.
I've been a trusted member of your den for ten years now.
You took me in when I was just some nobody without any real skills, and you brought me up when I was just a backwater human kid who couldn't speak Standard and got wide-eyed at every alien he saw – you showed me a universe outside of Seraphim.
You saw my potential and trained me to dance with a blade.
And in return, I've been loyal. Reliable.
You can trust me to show up on time and report back what I learn and –"
I faltered in my prepared speech. She wasn't looking at me, too busy flicking glowing displays that whirled around her, strings of numbers and text in different Primus languages, security feeds from the den and the neighbourhood and even from inside the guest suites – I could see Khrelen had made his way to a back room with his rus’a and she was currently occupying all of his fickle attention – and none of that was weird in and of itself, except that her eyestalks had suddenly tilted inward toward each other.
And it was only because I'd been with her for ten years, that I'd in essence become an adult under her care and endeavoured to soak up everything she taught me and everything around me like a little sponge, that I knew then that I was in trouble.
Eyestalks like that means a marn was upset. And it wasn't the kind of upset that was about being short on payments for my bunk: it was bigger than that. My stomach clenched, and I regretted that I'd forgone something substantial for a powdery ration bar which was currently a brick in my gut.
"And I've… made you mad?" I finished lamely.
A fluting sound escaped Trident's nostrils, which were just slits in her flat face.
One eyestalk tilted to look at me, her oblong pupil narrowing, and then the stalk twisted even further as she flicked at one hovering screen, pushing with her hand so that it flipped around and floated just in front of my nose.
"I didn't tell you to come so that we could review your contract or your current statement of account," she said, my eyes skimming the floating letters in front of me.
They were in marn, which meant it took a moment for the letters to shiver and shimmer into a translated version I could read, the ghost of Standard hovering on top of the overlay.
Just as they were settling down again, she added, voice thin, "I've been notified of a statement of debt that has been filed against you, Sashen, and I'm afraid this is where we must terminate our agreement. "
All at once, it felt like the whole space station had dropped out from beneath me, like I was in free fall from the edge of space toward an unforgiving planet below with no way of catching myself. I blinked, leaned in closer, my mouth agape.
The document glowing malevolently in front of my nose was an invoice. From home. "What the fuck," I hissed, reaching and grabbing at the screen so that a copy jolted into the display on my wrist. I flicked up my own copy, scrolling furiously through the air in front of me.
I skimmed the text as quickly as I could.
Seraphim Station & Colony, read the bold text at the top with the usual verse in haughty little letters below.
Room and board, for the first fifteen years of my life.
Training modules, which were, I don't know, Sunday school classes and the AI workbooks about our mission in the outer reaches of space.
Clothes were enumerated by year, water allowance, vaccinations, and –
"Come on," I said. "They've added a charge for tracking me down? Filing fees? There's a line here for emotional damages suffered by my mother. This isn't serious, Alet, and –" I looked at the number at the bottom of the invoice, and stopped breathing.
That was more than I'd made in the past decade. Sure, I paid Trident for room and board, and she deducted her own training fees and sometimes the den paid for me to learn new skills and those came out of my pay, but –
"There's no way I can pay this," I said, and I was horrified at how tremulous my voice sounded as I stared up at her again.