Deserted Spaceports, Empty Clips

The split tip of her violet tongue ran across her lower lip. She could still taste him…and his arousal. His flavor was as distinctive and colorful as his hide. She leaned against him, the warmth of her cheeks traveling down her neck and spreading across her chest.

Why don’t you just tell him the whole story already?

“Still on some meds…a decreasing dosage to wean me off.  It’s been a little rough.” She gave a shaky sigh, fighting back the urge to submit to encroaching memory.

The live band concluded their set and announced that they’d be taking a short intermission. The stage lights faded and the house lights returned, illuminating the way to the bar and the restrooms. The hooded figure was aware that it was now visible, but its features remained hidden. It took a sip from a glass of water and continued to watch. It was calm, relaxed, biding its time… but when Naya lifted a hand and removed the flyer from Feron’s pocket for another look, it leaned forward in its seat.  

Her hand dropped to his waist.

It’s too soon for another dose… just concentrate. It’ll pass.

The music number swelled to a rich crescendo of harmonizing technic chorus before it swept back down into a mellow organic beat.  Naya slid in front of  Feron, facing him, both hands at now at his hips.  “ Blending in, right?  Intel never was my strong point.”  She examined his glowing ‘constellation’ of freckles, smiling though the headache threatened to bring tears to her eyes. “But I see that subterfuge seems to have its perks.” Naya tilted her head and leaned in for a kiss, one hand lifting to caress his cheek, fingertips gently teasing the soft edges of his frill pleats.

Insert joke here about going ‘Under Covers’ later.  

As the drell embraced, a tall hooded figure—features obscured and blurred by the light-show--slipped into the room from the direction of the bar and settled in a corner booth. Instead of facing the stage it positioned itself at an angle, flashing lights at its back, content to study the crowd.  

She let an arm slip under his overcoat and around his waist as she leaned against him…They were just two tourists checking out upcoming shows. Nothing suspicious about us… Naya raised her free hand—also dappled by the colored lights--to one of the paper rally flyers, picking delicately at a loose corner. The paper peeled easily, cheap glue flaking off beneath her fingernails.  She tugged a bit more until the flyer came off in her hand, revealing the torn remnants of concerts and rallies past still plastered to the wall. She gave a little chuckle and rapped her knuckles against the scale-patterned corner of a yellowing poster. “Even an old Arid Caravan tour poster…this would be worth good money if it were complete and in better condition.”

Something else caught her attention and she squinted at the flyer in her hand.  “Feron, look...” The same light that illuminated Naya’s markings also revealed something scribbled in glue on the rear of the flyer, but much lighter and harder to make out.. Unable to make sense of the jumbled code (other than it seemed to be written in a hybridization of several alien alphabets), she handed it to Feron.

“This could be your password.”  

A low trill buzzed in the back of her throat and harmonized with the alien instrumental music that crept up the rusty basement stairs. Naya had seen many of these venues in her time yet she had never tired of them. She raised a hand and placed it against the poster-plastered metal door.

“Little nightclubs, they’re all unique.” Naya commented, her voice still raspy, loaded with mixed emotions. “It’s like stepping inside a creature with a life of its own, each with a unique personality, history, atmosphere.”  The ventilation system carried a renewed ‘breath’ of unfiltered air and synth music up the stairs. “…and flavor.” The tip of her v-notched tongue, similar in violet hue to her emotion-flushed frill, snuck out and ran across her lips.  

Don’t get too far off track.

Naya tipped her head back, eyes fixed on Feron, and let her tongue rest against the roof of her mouth as the taste-scent dispersed across her pallet. It took a second before the overwhelming odor of Omega proper was eliminated. The smell of the poster glue—animal and chemical—mixed with paper and traditional ink came first followed closely with the muddy scent of dozens of different smokeables and the aliens who favored them.  Not entirely pleasant, but it was delicious in its complexity and, over it all, was Feron.

So self-indulgent, Hranaya.

She let his scent and flavor linger for a few moments before continuing her study of the poster collection.  Her hand swept from side-to-side as if she was scanning the dates of upcoming shows, but her omni-tool flickered regularly in semi-stealth mode, capturing snapshots for Naya to study later in detail and compare to the suspicious propaganda leaflet. Satisfied that she had covered the readily-available flyers, she gestured down the stairs with a grin at the other drell.

Naya gave a pleased sigh and leaned her forehead against his, her honey-gold irises glittering in pools of night. “I’ve been wanting you to do that, too…” She placed the drink aside, setting it atop a broken vid-screen console, and embraced him. “Just…please stop saying things like ‘better than I deserve’,” she whispered. Her voice was tinged with a low husky trill that kept going even as she kissed him again.

For a few brief moments, Omega melted away.

The sound of rapid footfall departing, debris crunching beneath worn soles, triumphant giggling of children. Naya blinked and peered over Feron’s shoulder. A trio of street kids was absconding with the ginger ale flask. The smallest of the children, barely in rags and an old hooded coat, clutched the precious sweet treat against their chest.  The figure glanced back for a moment-- hood falling open to reveal the blue-scaled face, wide black eyes of a little drell boy—before all three of them disappeared down a side-alley. The street’s ventilation system kicked on, sending a handful of protest flyers fluttering after them.

It was a roughshod affair of shelves built from scrap metal in front of the rusted-out hull of an ancient transit shuttle. The shelves were filled with junk food, dried fruit, and bottled beverages, all of it locked behind wire mesh to discourage opportunistic street kids. The owner, an overweight batarian who squatted on an overturned ammo crate beside the entryway to the shuttle, squinted and grinned when he caught sight of drell. He stood slowly, laboriously, hands on his knees. His lower left eye was crusted over with a fatty tumor and half his needle-sharp teeth were broken, but his smile was genuine enough.

“Yes madam, yes, greetings,” he burbled, jowls wiggling. “Can I help you find anything?”  

Naya folded her hands behind her back, leaning over the case of beverages as she scanned the bottles.  “Anything with ginger? Or yuulroot?  Fizzy preferably but not fermented.” She reached down and tapped on the mesh with the middle fingers of her right hand. “Ah, top shelf here. The yellow flask.”

“Ginger-Ale it’s called, yes,” the batarian fished an archaic-looking key ring out of his coat pocket then bent to unlock the case. “You have good taste in human sugar-water.” Naya picked up the bottle, studied it carefully.  The shopkeep spoke up again:  “I promise it is still sealed and in-date, madam. I’m always careful with alien wares.”    

“Hrm, yeah, good enough.”  She activated her omnitool with the flick of a wrist, waved it over the store’s rickety pay station. The batarian grunted a ‘thank you’ and shuffled back to his seat. Naya turned to Feron as she unscrewed the top of the flask. She gave it a sniff, then a sip, and smiled up at him.

“A dirt-poor fishing village on Kahje. We all shared the bounty when someone hauled in a large catch (the ruby-spined bass were beautiful and delicious)…there would be celebration, giving-of-thanks to the sea…all of that.”

She huffed. “Yes, let’s give thanks to the sea…even though it was our own people who bled, and sometimes died, in order to bring in the rare harvest. The hanar were strict about how much wild-caught animal protein we consumed yet no amount of futuristic jellyfish technology could completely eliminate attrition in the—“

Naya’s omni-tool buzzed softly.

“Hrmm. Our vacation will be a blast. We’ll see if Arid Caravan is playing any festivals soon.”  Her eyelids fluttered. “Have you heard of them? All-drell group. Originally formed to preserve ancient songs and instrumentals from Rakhana, but they’ve since branched off into covering alien music.” She whistled a few bars, soft, fluting and ethereal.

“I’m particularly fond of their take on asari strings and 20th-human-century ‘pop’ sets…though their batarian thrash metal is pretty impressive.” Naya hadn’t seemed this enthusiastic about something since she had first shown Feron all the modifications she had made to her pistol.

Her headache was thumping in time with the bass, each beat more pointed than the last. Her fingers slowly uncurled, stretched. The drell shifted in her seat and fiddled with an ammo pouch on her belt.  A trio of candy-red pills appeared in her palm.  

She popped them in her mouth, rolled them under her tongue.  The tablets dissolved almost immediately and Naya took a drink of water to wash down the bitter aftertaste.

Pathetic lizard.

Her headache faded, the self-deprecating inner monologue ceased, and her confidence returned. Naya straightened and nodded to the turian.

“Yes, sir.  I’ll do my best.”

“Thank you, Evrik. Fully-immersive, repeating traumatic memories can be fatal to our kind. This pattern usually only manifests in the very old or the very ill.” Naya grumbled at her throbbing head and pinched the bridge of her nose. “Not what you wanted to hear, I’m sure. But I lost my…” She sighed and rubbed her wounded crest, the itching had turned to a strange tingling.  “I’ve lost a loved one from it—they were driven mad by the end, unable to tell memory from reality.”

Her hands curled into tight green-scaled fists.

“You went deep that time,” Naya said quietly, ignoring his question for the moment. Her voice took on a low-pitched sympathetic thrum…it was a habit she had picked up from her grandmother, who always used the same reassuring trill after Naya had experienced a waking nightmare as a child.  

Drinks were pushed aside and Naya shifted closer to Feron, putting one arm along the back of his seat while her other hand reached for his. Green fingers enveloped blue.

She looked away, trailed Evrik to a booth. The once-decadent cushions, now threadbare, still proved comfortable. Most importantly, the alcove gave them a sense of privacy. Naya took a seat, nudging her drink aside, and leaned forward as Evrik settled across from her. She reached out and grasped at his clawed hand to give it a fond squeeze. “Thanks for having us.” The drell sighed, gazing up at the ceiling as she collected her thoughts.

Good guy. Genuine. Takes care of his people.

She allowed an arm to loop around the turian’s slender waist while she leaned over, picking up the other drink.  Naya gave the turquoise liquid a sniff and immediately felt the pleats of her frill ripple at burning reply. “SSsss, hello.” She inhaled through her teeth, the scent washing across her tongue. “What’s this, guys? ...besides ‘very strong.’”  Naya looked up, expecting a clever reply from Feron, but the other drell was preoccupied with customizing his drink behind the bar.

Hrm.

“Someone needs to keep an eye on him…I’ve been slacking.” Naya cleared her throat, stepped forward and raised her glass in a toast. “Here’s to the Little Varren who Could.” She took a restrained sip. “It’s—tch—good to be back.”

Thanks to last year’s unwelcome alien intervention, Naya was quite familiar with some of Feron’s past trauma…just as he was now familiar with hers.  In her mind she glimpsed a blood-smeared interrogation chair then imagined the sensation of tiny, diamond-tipped tendrils burrowing into the nape of her neck. She suppressed a shudder.

“I know you will, Feron. And I’ll help if I can….” She leaned forward and tried to catch his eye, offering him a sideways little grin. “Us freelancers have to stick together, right? Er..unless we’re competitors, in which case…uh.” Her eyelids flickered and she straightened awkwardly. “Eh, you know what I mean.”

Smooooooth.

By the time she had thought of something clever to say, they had entered Tuhi District.  Naya glanced down a side street and noticed a pair of turian security guards in Arkos’s regalia. They were interviewing a haggard-looking human shopkeep while their tech-drone made a sweeper-scan of the alley.  It wasn’t long before The Ivy’s façade appeared before them. Naya felt her frill and cheeks grow warm, she was eager to sit down with Feron in a familiar environment.