That’s how my boss got people on that shit. I understood it, seeing as I was the one delivering synthetics, or something akin to it. He rewarded his lot with more than credits, a piece of the hit, nothing too much because he wouldn’t waste the potential revenue, but enough to have his people crawling back. While I never took the hard shit, always dragged myself away when I could afford to, or got myself hit over the head for daring to suggest it, that didn’t mean I didn’t give in from time to time when I shouldn’t have.
Broken, broken things…
By the time the drought wore off, Zavir was passed out in bed, two of his arms thrown over my waist. We weren’t on the bunk. Two mattresses had been dragged onto the floor where we were. The desk was upside down, my body ached in all the right ways, and my sight was a little blurry.
Arana and Ryker returned. When? Hadn’t the foggiest, but they slept on the top bunks. Rolling off the mattress, I crawled around in search of my underwear. I needed to take a piss, but Zavir had ripped my boxers in half, asshole.
Pants on, I staggered out of the room in a daze. My commlink said it was nearing 0300, so there shouldn’t have been anyone up.Thinking theguy who was up at that hour.However, at the end of the hall, a pale blue light emitted from beneath Roys’ door.
“Holo screen,” I grumbled, keeping a hand on the wall to steady my walking.
The captain was probably up doing paperwork or some other boring shit, but my rattled mind led me to the door anyway. There were voices. Plural.
I pressed my ear against the door. One voice was too low to fully make out, just a jumble of words my fuzzy brain couldn’t comprehend. Then Roys talked and I couldn’t comprehend that either because he was using earth speak. A documentary once claimed there had been an age when humans had thousands of written and oral languages, but after the world’s collapse, earthers rounded themselves up for protection or jumped into space. Before they realized it, much of what they once knew had been absorbed by others, origins forgotten, or vanished entirely.
I stood there a while, my mind unfolding as the drought wore off. I never met anyone from earth. Didn’t think anyone really left. But there Roys was, fully using earth speech. That wasn’t a damn translator.
He was the furthest away from home than any of us.
012
“ThebastardisfromEarth.”
“Speaking their language is not the same as being from there,” Lilea declared.
At the front of the group, Iylene took over Roys’ duty of cutting through the vegetation. We left the jungle behind to enter a high field. The flora came up to our waists with moving leaf-like structures that released venom if they cut you. The two suns danced on either side of us. Night on The Planet lasted five hours, on average, which may explain why the flora took over. More sunlight, more energy. The days were longer, too, at twenty-eight hours.
“Yeah, I’m not convinced. I met plenty of girls who used earth speak that weren’t from there. Mostly learned it for their wealthy patrons.” Arana swatted at a type of insect that lived in the fields. They dipped down to irritate the ferns and feasted off their venom.
“So the alternative is that our captain was a fuckboy for wealthy Earth patrons?” I laughed at the thought.
Then again, he certainly knew what to say in the caves. If he could do that easily enough, and with that marvelous bone structure, he would have been popular.
“The alternative is that our captain takes his job seriously and probably learned the language either from interacting with Corporate — those assholes are mostly Earthers, or he simply knows a few languages,” Ryker replied.
“I’m not buying it. I knew he pissed me off, and now I know why. I sensed it.”
Iylene was the only one who didn’t laugh. Lilea was the only one I pinched since she was the closest. Her head retracted slightly in shock.
“If he’s an Earther, he would be of a much higher rank than captain, don’t you think?” Lilea suggested while rubbing her cheek. “Most of them are part of The Company or Corporate. They’d have to be in order to survive on Earth.”
“Right. Theypayfor their healthcare and housing.” Zavir gagged. “Barbaric!”
“Most places run by humans are like that,” Iylene said.
“As I said, barbaric, the species as a whole.” Zavir shifted his attention between me, Ryker, and Arana. “No offense.”
“None taken,” we said in unison.
Zavir’s thoughts weren’t exactly uncommon ones from alien and earthling alike. Prior to human colonization, the universe thrived under the rule of the Intergalactic Court, untainted by human hands. Planets like Zavir’s were renowned, a place thriving without the crushing fist of capitalism. Lilea, too, came from a peaceful race who prioritized nature and health. Earth wasn’t like that, thus leading to the deterioration of a vibrant planet and led to their space exploration.
Earthers had no other choice than to seek the abundant resources of space. As earthlings settled on more and more planets, as they built and grew and spread like a virus, parts of the universe became as infected as they were. They saw what more offered, turned their noses at thedestruction, and accepted the luxuries laid at their feet, built upon the corpses of souls they would never meet.
But not all of them. Far from any of us were systems entirely free of places like The Company banding together under one flag known as The Alliance. Still part of the Intergalactic Court, The Alliance was the remnant of what the court had once been. Their territory laid far past the Rim, even the Outer Rim. Tales said they cared, that they were more than a well-oiled machine built to steal and coerce. None of us were likely to see their worlds, but it was a pleasant thought.
Maybe a millennium from now, when we were all returned to stardust, earthers and their ways would be nothing more than a bad memory.
“Earth speak is an uncommon tongue and more complicated than need be, as most human creations are. How he knows it, I am curious to learn, but I do not find it of that much importance,” said Iylene, clearing our path with vicious efficiency. The insects followed us in droves, practically a cloud at our back, feasting upon the venomous remains.
