EliteCommander

Price of Life (EliteCommander and Cath)

In all honesty, the market was a bit overwhelming for Senjen. It was crowded, sure, but so were cities back home. The part that could easily make him nervous was how little he realized he understood about everything going on around him. There were Tindrel causing trouble in a restaurant nearby...or were they? Was the chaos he saw a sign of actual troublemakers, or was that just something expected in that establishment. Either way, he was going to keep his distance from that one. Senjen had done as much research as he could to try to prepare when he left home, and one thing he had learned was not to make assumptions, but where did that end? How small or “obvious” of things could he make assumptions about? Hopefully, aliens were used to outsiders not understanding their ways, because now that he was alone, he had only his own instinct to guide him.

At the very least, it was indeed easy enough to find a QV shop, as they stood out rather strongly beside any other species. He approached the lower floor out front with the adults. “Hello, is this your shop? A QV friend of mine sent me to pick up some things. I have a list here…” He said, accessing a document to send over a list of anything he did not recognize to whoever the shopkeeper was.

Price of Life (EliteCommander and Cath)

Senjen laid a finger on the business card. His frame had similar software hooks to match galactic standards for cybernetic implants, so he could use them just as the organics could. “I will.” He answered. Seeing as Kreena seemed to have other business to get to at the moment, he decided not to take up any more of her time. “Let’s see, does this thing roll up…” He muttered to himself as he took a moment to figure out the best way to carry her gift. Utaysi frames tended to take advantage of any space they had, as most spaces that were not used for internal components were designed as storage compartments. The smallest compartments were like pockets in his forearms and thighs. There were two long compartments along his back, while the largest were along his underbelly. Most commonly, he carried some spare parts and tools for repairs in the event of an emergency. He had never actually needed them, but it was the responsible thing to do, especially now that he was off the homeworld.

As soon as he had taken his leave, Senjen took another look at the list Light had given him. He probably could not afford to waste more time if he wanted to be finished by the time Light returned. He seemed to want food, and a few things for the ship. Easy enough. For the former, the best place to start to look for something Light wanted would probably be a QV vendor, which would be easy enough to spot from a distance.

Price of Life (EliteCommander and Cath)

Senjen laughed lightly. “It feels like botany comes naturally to Tekeri, though I guess that’s what thousands of years of experience will do. I’ve only ever seen pictures of Tekeri cities, still haven’t...visited one, but it really is incredible how alive they look. Maybe one of these days, if the Utaysi and Tekeri get stronger diplomatic connections, that technology can help revitalize Orostro? It’s a nice place now and everything, but they’re trying to bring its ecosystem back to what it was like before the extinction.”

Once again, Senjen was surprised for a moment when the Tekeri offered him a gift. He accepted it readily, and was glad to receive it, though he also showed a tinge of guilt. “Oh, thank you, I wasn’t expecting that. I...well I don’t have my own ship. I came here in my client’s. I can definitely use this, but I don’t know if I can buy too much right now, since it’s his ship.” He leaned back somewhat to look around the stall and see if it had its own name, though not all in this market did. He was not sure how long the stalls around here stayed in the same place, or even if they set up in the same spot every day. “Say, what’s your name? When I do get my own ship, or maybe my own place on Korit, I’d like to keep you in mind.”

Price of Life (EliteCommander and Cath)

Senjen too ended up distracted briefly by the design the Tekeri was making. Even just the concepts were so...unique. For a moment, he imagined what Light’s ship would look like decorated up in the Tekeri style. To him, a bit of greenery made any place seem more inviting; after all, that was precisely what had drawn him to her stall. He had not though of the idea of modifying another species’ ship in their style, but it was honestly an appealing thought.

A Utaysi had plenty of physical cues for their emotions, and with their hyperempathy, a Tekeri could certainly read them, as long as they were familiar enough with their kind. Senjen showed genuine curiosity, as well as being mildly startled when he was snapped out of his thoughts. “Oh, um, hi.” His expression was a close equivalent to a smile. “Sorry, I’m new to the station. New off my homeworld, really. My friend sent me to buy some supplies. I don’t think you sell them, but...these packs you mention are interesting. I guess it’s probably common out here, but Tekeri designs just seem so unique to me. I do love nature and the outdoors, but the idea of bringing that feeling into a ship never would have occurred to me before leaving home.” He lifted up one foot and glanced down. “Is this real grass? How do you get it to grow up here?”

Price of Life (EliteCommander and Cath)

To Senjen, two years of treatment sounded like a lot of time for Light to live in stress for his life. In that way, he certainly did not envy organics. If a Utaysi had a problem part, “treatment” just entailed replacing it, then getting on with their life. He had read that organics could replace most of their parts too, but the process was much more of an ordeal. He guessed that Light had probably considered all of his options already, so he just hoped that his treatment would be as simple as he made it sound.

Senjen had no problem picking up a few things while waiting for Light, though the list he sent was certainly necessary. He really had no idea what sort of supplies a Quelun-Vosh would want or need, and he had need of very little himself. Electricity in any form was enough to keep his frame powered, and the ship could provide that easily enough. Replacement parts and tools for maintenance were also a necessity, but he had bought enough of those before leaving home and had not yet used any of them, so he was not in need at the moment.

While the district as a whole was not a place that seemed to attract a crowd, the market seemed to be a different story. There were stalls and shops set up anywhere space permitted, and with it existing in microgravity, that meant they could also stack shops from ceiling to floor that pedestrians could still navigate. A QV owned shop would probably have been the most logical starting point for whatever Light was searching for, but Senjen’s own curiosity did pull him elsewhere first. This whole district was such a mix of cultural styles, and there was one stall he spotted on the ground floor that he could not help but to visit. It was obviously Tekeri-owned, because in contrast to all the surrounding stalls, it had the appearance of being made of wood. Not only that, but the floor in its little space was dirt and grass, instead of metal. There was grass, of all things, growing on a space station, and that fact simply tickled him. He floated down in front of the stall and let his claws on one foot dig just slightly into the dirt to anchor him in place while he browsed. He could not tell by sight if it was real or not, but it did feel convincing.

Price of Life (EliteCommander and Cath)

Senjen gave another glance to the statue. “Maybe, but it also sounds awesome. I wonder if there are any recordings of that…”

Following Light’s direction, the pair floated down just above another street. Senjen’s attention was quickly divided by some of the displays he could see. In particular, the droid showroom, drew his sensors. It was like the offers that Tekeri had been making after they landed, except this was actually a legitimate business. Mechanical frames built fully with alien tech, right there for sale. As long as they could be prepped to accept a Utaysi personality matrix, the possibility of becoming one of them was right there for a...discouragingly high price, if he was being honest. He had already spent so much of his savings just making the upgrades to his own frame for galactic travel. Buying a whole new one was still out of reach. Maybe he could take out a loan, but he probably did not want to be doing that before he had even gotten his bearings on a new planet.

Senjen snapped back into the moment once he was questioned. He gave another quick check to the map he was following, and it seemed they were nearing the first stop Light wanted to make. “Oh, um...I don’t think I really have anything specific in mind. I think I want to get a better sense of what it’s like out here before I start thinking about big purchases, you know?” There was some hesitation from him, as the question had brought up another in Senjen’s mind. “Look...forgive me for prying, but you didn’t really answer before. How long are you going to need to work for your treatments? Because it sounded important, and I’m just wondering if you’re making enough off these jobs to get them.”

Price of Life (EliteCommander and Cath)

Senjen was briefly caught off-guard. His suggestion had to been to grab onto his tail so he could lead the way through the fast lane to their destination, not to climb on his back like Light was going to ride him into battle. Still...he supposed this would be easier in the end. “Ah...you know, I thought that stuff would feel colder.”

Before, Light had sounded like he was in a rush to get his gel suit replenished. He was not entirely sure if that had just been an excuse to try to pull them out of trouble, but Senjen supposed he would want to get to that sooner rather than later. Senjen might have wanted to take the scenic route and explore, but for now he could settle for some casual sightseeing on the way to their destination. Maybe once they made the drop-off, there would be some free time to explore the station, or maybe even the planet below? There was a space elevator connecting them, so it was not like it was difficult to get down to the surface.

Senjen took hold of one of the ropes and gave it a pull to float the two of them “upwards”, towards the inner pedestrian lines closer to the center of the station. It was not strictly necessary in zero-G, but the station was still organized with a clear sense of up and down, purely for psychological reasons. Most species found it easier to navigate with those sorts of directions in mind. The buildings and basic layout of the city still resembled those built in a gravity well, at least superficially. The lines higher up from the street were meant for faster pedestrian traffic, so that was what they would take. He decided to take the straight path, rather than the left one. Even if the latter was shorter, being able to keep up a good, constant pace would probably end up being faster in the end.

Senjen pulled on the pedestrian line until they were going as fast as they could safely go. With his mass, he needed to be particularly careful about giving himself too much momentum, but that also meant others were less likely to get in their way. He connected to the local net and brought up the station map. Light had marked where he wanted to go, so he needed to make sure not to overshoot.

As they were floating along just by inertia, Senjen could still at least watch the places they were passing by. “I wonder who that Tekeri is? I know it isn’t ruled by them alone anymore, but Korit was first settled by Tekeri, right? This station isn’t built in their style, but I really hope to see a station, or city, or something that is. I know it’s not as practical as other designs, but the fact that they try to include natural features in their construction is just amazing to me. I mean, imagine a ship that feels like a forest? Greenery, vines, trees everywhere...I read that they’ve genetically engineered plant species not just from their own world, but alien worlds too, so they can grow in microgravity. I wonder if that’s how they got the trees to grow out in front of that building over there? Or maybe they were transplanted?”

Price of Life (EliteCommander and Cath)

Light sounded confident in his opinion, but Senjen still seemed skeptical. “I don’t know, I just have a hard time thinking that someone would rather fight a war, that they might lose, if they had the option to just easily go somewhere else. There is so much space out there, so many unclaimed stars. If you didn’t have to worry about planets being habitable, we could all expand out in different directions and it would be, I don’t know...millions of years before we even had to interact with each other. The Utaysi do have that choice, at least, but I really hope it doesn’t come to that.”

Regardless, Senjen much preferred to talk about his own hopes than hypothetical wars, and the talk of what QV cities were like did easily capture his attention. He wondered if Light had come from a QV world, or if he was from somewhere like Korit? Either way, he would have come from somewhere much different from Orostro. “I’ve seen pictures of QV settlements and everything, but I don’t think that really captures what it’s like to be there. There’s simulations that can do more, but...honestly I started avoiding those. I want my first time experiencing these places to be when I’m there, seeing it with my own sensors, feeling it with my own hands. Of course, if I wanted to visit a QV settlement, I would need to get a more specialized frame. I may not need air or anything, but this body does sink like a brick. I know there’s submersibles and suits that visitors can use, but that’s not how I’d want to experience it, you know?”

The transition to the Concourse brought them once again into microgravity. He had gotten somewhat used to the sensation during the journey to Korit, but he had not spent too much time in space before this job. That “drop” during the shift, that feeling of falling, was still, metaphorically speaking, breathtaking to him. And that wasn’t even considering the sight of the Grand Concourse itself. Orostro had space stations, but nothing like this. Korit’s space infrastructure had been built up over a time spanning almost two thousand years, fueled by trade with worlds across their corner of the galaxy. They simply existed on a scale that the Utaysi had not yet reached. This station was like a city all its own, and it was almost hard to believe that they had the technology to put so much life in the dead of space. Yet, his sensors did not lie to him. Senjen was silent for a short while after they left the train and floated out into the open, and when he did speak, Light might have noticed a certain lightness to his attitude. “No, no, we don’t need a monorail. It will probably be faster just to...well is ‘walk’ really the word, when we’re all floating around?”

Senjen could only imagine how much of a challenge it must have been to design a space in microgravity that so many people were meant to traverse. Despite the crowding, it was organized in a way. Pedestrian traffic was situated in lanes, guided by these “ropes”, of a sort, that ran up and down the cylinder. Senjen was not completely sure of what they were made of, but it looked to be something like carbon fiber. They could be used for moving around in zero-G, if one did not have thrusters, and were numerous enough that one was never too far away if someone ended up with some unwanted momentum. They were mostly taut, but had enough give to avoid harm if someone ended up flying into one at a decent speed. Part of the additions Senjen had made to his frame for traveling had been a simple RCS, but it was still better only to use it when needed to conserve its fuel.

“Okay, so I’ve read up on this. There’s all sorts of rules and unspoken conventions for moving around in a station like this, right?” Senjen said, sounding almost excited. “We need to go to the other side of the Concourse, so...faster traffic sticks to the inner lines. But there’s still speed limits for pedestrians, so not too fast. Even with all the rules, collisions are still more, uh, expected out here, compared to in a gravity well. A lot harder to avoid bumping into strangers, but we still try to minimize it. I know one of those unspoken rules is that whoever has more mass has the right-of-way, because ultimately, regardless of politeness or any other societal custom, inertia still has the final say.”

Senjen grabbed one of the ropes and pulled himself in front of Light, then looked back with a chuckle. Once again, he banged a hand against his chestplate hard enough to get a few metallic clanks. “And well, who has more mass than me, right? Grab my tail and let me pull us along. We’ll get there in no time.”

Price of Life (EliteCommander and Cath)

“Uh, well…” Senjen struggled to come up with an answer immediately, as he found the question to be deceptively complicated. He had read up on at least some of the galactic history his people had not been around to witness. It was not all bad, to be sure. Even all the known civilizations combined had only scratched the surface of what there was to explore in just their corner of the galaxy, and sometimes, they could cooperate on it. Most people still lived among their own species, but then were some places like Korit where aliens of all types could be found. They were much rarer, admittedly, but these were the places that had captured Senjen’s imagination. With the sheer amount of space and abundance of most resources out in the galaxy, though, he had not expected as much conflict or outright warfare as there had apparently been, perhaps because he had not realized the value of habitable worlds to every single other species. They were decidedly not abundant, and usually worth fighting over in some way or another.

“I...hope we can avoid the wars I keep reading about. That’s probably the first thing that comes to mind. Maybe we can, though, since we don’t have to compete over habitable worlds. Orostro is the only planet we have that can support life, and we don’t really need any others. When there isn’t fighting, I feel like the galaxy could be a wonderful place. Or at least a very interesting one to explore.” Senjen began. As they spoke, the next monorail arrived and they were able to move from the crowded corridor onto the still-crowded transport. It was fairly quick-moving, about as much as they could get away with without sending its passengers tumbling into one another whenever it accelerated. Different areas of the passenger train seemed to cater to different species and their preferred methods of securing themselves. They were not evenly divided either, Senjen noticed. He guessed that the distribution of seats was probably the same as the demographic distribution of the planet’s visitors, in the name of efficiency. Not one of them looked to be made for the average Utaysi frame, but he had an iron grip and could keep himself steady wherever he needed to stand. The monorail moved through the middle of one of the spokes, “up” towards the Grand Concourse at the center of the station. The trains moving through the center lines would not stop along the spoke, but there were smaller elevators closer to the outside that led to private residences along the outer wall of the spoke. The sheer size of the station did impress him for the fact that even the spokes had livable space, as well as their commitment to not wasting even a small amount of it.

Senjen continued once they were settled. “The Quelun-Vosh, your people, are maybe one of the most immediately interesting to me. Not only are you an aquatic species, unlike all the others out here, but the place your species came from is just so fundamentally different from all the rest. Deep underwater, in a lightless place except what your own bodies make. I can’t help but to wonder about all the little things that must be different, that I might not even think about.”

Price of Life (EliteCommander and Cath)

“Oh, yeah. Orostro is our homeworld. I was born there.” Senjen answered. He used the word “born” seemingly without thought of any confusion it might cause. “It’s a nice world, now. A very safe world, compared to a lot of life-bearing planets. On a geological time scale, it is just coming out of a major mass extinction event, so there’s not a lot of large predators. Or large animals at all, really. It’s mostly the small ones that managed to survive. My people came out of the bunker and started re-settling the planet while it was still pretty hostile to life. It’s gotten...a lot nicer since then. We have also been helping it along, as much as we can. Seed vaults from our progenitors helped us re-plant a lot of lost plant species, and more recently, now that we have the technology to clone animals in artificial wombs, we’ve been reintroducing some extinct animal species from preserved genetic material.”

Senjen raised up his posture just enough to get a look over the crowd and at least try to get a sense of how long it was going to take. He did hope this parade was still going on after they made their delivery, but he was eager to get this data out of his head. Regardless, with a glance down at Light, he realized he had not fully answered the question. “I haven’t really been around for a lot of that, though. I’m pretty young, honestly. But it hasn’t taken long for me to figure out I’m not going to be content just existing on the homeworld. Exotic alien pets didn’t really cut it. I want to see the planets and species out here that didn’t end up destroying themselves. Korit...I guess it’s kind of the opposite of Orostro. They took a world that started out dead and brought it to life.”