Malparadiso Station Season 1.2

Episode 2 Into the Soup

Yroi Ozazal

Episode 2: Into The Soup

The creds would buy her a quick meal, so she wouldn’t have to cook before she slid into the sleep tank. She took a quick mist, not wasting creds on a full shower, but glad to have her skin wet again. She slipped into her tube robe, which only revealed her species by the ridge of her lobe in the hood. Some of the slave traders were bold enough to snatch a female, even right under the noses of the Malparadiso Guard. Her silver and black skin banding might draw their attention. It was an asset on the shuttle with her transparent bit of uniform, but not outside Main Tube.

She walked through the tube, taking the drop down to the Bubble on the Rim of Lev1. It was a little pricey, but the food was better than average. The Bubble had a dome where she could see the stars. She had tried to get a job there, but they wouldn’t hire a Kleek. They said she wouldn’t get used to the idea of only a skin of complastalloy between her and Nothing.

Agoraphobia, they called it. But when she showed her credits, they let her in soon enough, even if she had to sit near the kitchen, far from the dome.

Yroi had never been on the surface, the Stone under her feet and Nothing but distant suns overhead, but she knew that was where any future she had would begin. Just working on Lev1 was more than almost any other Kleek achieved, unless they rode herd on sanitation rovers. She wanted to breathe fresh air and have a chance to learn how the Off-world lived and where they got their strange ideas. She didn't want to live and die a Stoner.

She ordered a deep-level fish, pearly white, raised in the dark tunnels that ringed the reclaiming vats. The large fins were crispy fried; the meat pulled from the bones, arranged in a sunburst on her plate with a tiny dot of blue-green nike’rot in the middle. She let it grow across the white fish while she ate her salad. It was a special treat, a relief from the usual blocks of sauced toufood she ate in her pod. It might all come from the same mold, but it was nice, as the spacer had said, to see what it really looked like before nike’rot spread to make flavors intense, triggering endorphins. She wondered why the human wanted the second best restaurant.

She took a bite of the fish, now veined with nike’rot. Its flavor spread from her mouth into her face, her ears, even to the far tip of her lobe. No wonder off-worlders came parsecs to get nike’rot. Nobody could grow it anywhere else. If she could manage to get enough of it, she could buy a ticket to get away from the Stone. She stared at the stars outside the dome, leaning into the endorphin mix. If she could breathe space, she could walk naked on the surface between the Stone and Nothing. Equally likely.

She made herself eat slowly. The nike’rot would only last half an hour before it went into its next life cycle, which was disgusting, but she wanted to spread out the effect as long as she could.

In the kitchen, someone started yelling. The kitchen door irised as several waiters ran towards her to see what was happening. The same human was there, struggling with a couple of dwarfenkind who were trying to throw him out. They butted his knees with their heads, pulling him off balance to bring him down to their height. One of them had a cleaver.

A surge of adrenaline fed into the nike’rot effect. Yroi dashed into the kitchen.

“Oh my honored Sentient! Please don’t hurt Sentient. Please!” She fell to her knees, shoving one of the knee-high Dwarfen aside. She grabbed a fistful of the human’s tunic. The nike’rot made all her senses sharper: the texture of the tunic, the oily damp heat of the kitchen, the stink of fear from the human. That smell released some unknown reserve.

She pulled him to her, crying. “Forgive me, Sentient, I let you get lost. I have searched everywhere for you.” She made her voice a shrill plea, “Please don’t hurt Sentient.” She pushed their grabbing hands from the human, pulling him to her like a large child. “Shut up,” she hissed in the human’s ear, “if you don’t want to be an entrée.”

The chef, still holding its cleaver at Yroi’s eye level, stared at her. It’d never seen klekovans join a fight or try to save any but one of their own. Even then, they would usually leave one victim behind to scuttle away themselves.

“He hired you for a guide? He’s too stupid to eat.” The chef kicked the human’s back. “Let him go. She’s probably already unloaded him.”

The others let go, their fingers leaving bruises on his exposed skin. Yroi helped him to stand. He was very light for his height. She propped him up as best as she could, her neck under his arm, and took him out the back.

They stumbled along the alleyway until they reached the Main. Her food would be spoiled by now anyway. The effects of the nike’rot were wearing off too.

“I...I don’t know what to say,” the human stammered. He had lost all his bravado just about the time he had nearly lost a limb. He seemed to have some trouble breathing, too.

“Saying ‘Thank you’ would be a good place to start.” Yroi led him to an overnight warren where he could rent a sleep pod for a few credits. She showed him how to pay for a pod, opening one up to show him the controls.

“I can’t sleep in there. It’s like a coffin!” He drew his head even closer to his shoulders, like a tortoise. He was very pale, shaking so much that he had to lean against the warren wall.

“What’s a coffin?” Yroi asked.

“You don’t bury your dead?” Myril backed up, shocked.

Yroi shook her head. “I don’t understand what you mean. The dead go in the reclaiming vats, if they aren’t tossed down a shaft or made into chili.” She pressed the controls to close the pod.

He went from pale to green. He slumped against the wall, panting a little, with his eyes closed.

“Are you sick? Who are you?” Yroi kicked herself. What was she doing here with this off world without a clue? The nike’rot must have been pretty close to next stage by the time she had eaten it. When would she learn not to pick up strays—an alien stray at that? They always started out cute, and then turned into nike’rot fodder.

He took a few deep breaths, still with his eyes closed. “I’m Myril Jawk, a chef from the Transtos sector.”

“Yroi Ozazal, Stone Kleek.”

He opened his eyes. “You are the shuttle attendant.” He stared at her.

She stared back. “If you are going to survive your visit, you need a guide. Do you have any credits left, or did the fuzzcats get them all?”

He didn’t reach into his pockets, but opened his tunic to feel under his arm. Maybe he wasn’t as foolish as he seemed. “Listen, I am sorry about what I called you, and...everything. Thank you. I don’t know why you saved me, but thank you.”

“Core only knows.” Yroi shook her head at her own stupidity. “You need a place to sleep. You can’t sleep out here, not if you expect to wake up.”

“Isn’t there some kind of hotel? I don’t need the best, just...”

“Just the second best would cost me a year’s wages. Why are you here? How did you expect to get by?”

“I am a chef, a very good one. I came here to get a job, and to learn how to use nike’rot.”

“Who’s your contact?”

“Contact?”

Yroi sighed again. “You can’t just prance in here like you own the place. Nobody’s going to hire you unless someone they know vouches for you, especially not to cook.” She shook her head, looked him over again. “I wouldn’t let you near my food.”

“I didn’t know.” Myril’s last tinge of bravado collapsed. “I sold everything I had to get here. On my planet, anybody can get a job in a restaurant, washing dishes or something. It’s where you start.”

“You’re in the Stone now.” Yroi absently scratched her shoulder. In a few hours, her skin would get dry. She wanted to get in her tank soon. She ought to leave this big baby out here for whoever got to him first, but she couldn’t do that. He was...a baby. And he did know about things off-world.

“Look, if you can be polite to kleeks, my aunt runs a diner on Lev3. She might let you mop the floor until she decides if you are worthy to clean the grill. I can’t promise, but it’s the best I can do. I don’t have any Lev1 contacts. None of them would be interested in you.”

“But what’s in it for you?” Myril looked hopeful, although still the greenish color of nike’rot after it turned into the fourth, inedible lifecycle.

“Now that sounds like a Stoner—you might survive here a day or two.” Yroi smiled. “You plan to go back to your world. Teach me what I need to know when I get there. Have you actually lived on the surface?”

“Of course, never in a dungeon liked this. “

She jerked her head towards the tube that led to a Lev3 drop. “Walk with me. Tell me about your world.” She slipped into her shuttle attendant role as if it was warm, salty water.

Myril glanced down the walkway. “It goes down.”

She gave him a hard stare and shrugged.