Air leaked from the damaged section of the ship, and the ship shuddered.
“We have to go,” Phares said. “We have to get back.”
“The Stonebroke was saved by the heroics of this miner,” a voice said from the news report. The hologram shifted, showing the miner who had saved the ship.
It was Shoval. Phares’s paternal.
Phares looked like he wanted to rip the hologram off the wall and obliterate it.
What in the world happened that Shoval was able to stop it?
Olmed’s horns tingled. Something about this wasn’t right.
“Yeah, we got hit hard, but I managed to secure the ship. Good thing I was there. No one else could have done it.”
Phares walked away, muttering to himself. He slammed the chair, sending it flying across the bar.
Erzo crossed to him. “Peace, my friend. At least they’re okay.”
“Get sucked out an airlock,” he muttered and walked away.
“Where are you going?”
“Not here.” Phares headed out of the bar.
Erzo and Olmed watched him leave.
“You think his parental really saved the ship?” Olmed asked.
“Anything is possible.” Erzo picked up his drink and took a sip. “More likely, he caused the problem to begin with.”
Olmed nodded, for he had the same thought. “Should we follow him?” He gestured the way that Phares walked.
Erzo picked up his drink and downed the rest of it. “It won’t be hard.”
“Why?”
“He’s just going back.”
Olmed nodded. Because that’s where he wanted to go as well.
Erzo and Olmed split in two different directions to see where Phares went. They were close to the main commercial docking ports, so they both guessed that Phares probably headed that way to secure transport. The vessel they arrived on had been docked for maintenance for the next two weeks as part of their trip. If they wanted to go anywhere, they would have to get commercial transport.
Humanoids of all systems resided on Disguised Serenity. Billed as a place with no discrimination, it had also become a place where those who had no home went to begin a new life.
Olmed had considered briefly when he received his sentence that traveling to the station might be a good location for him to start finding a new place.
The tunnel he walked through—an old star cruiser--had been retrofitted into a commercial port for spaceships to connect and unload and reload travelers.
That’s what Disguised Serenity was—a series of old, damaged spaceships that were left to rot in a junk float, and several scavengers decided to hook them all together to make a station. It worked so well, the total count of ships now attached to Disguised Serenity was unknown. Truly, upon approach, the place looked like a child’s toy storage, where all the vessels had been shoved together, and couldn’t get pulled back apart.
He stayed in the middle, following the flow, and avoiding the vendors on either side of the isle, attempting to sell travelers whatever little trinket they may need, whether it was last minute necessities or memorabilia from the station.
He felt the scanner in his pocket. This might be an ideal time to see if there’s any trace of the tools in this part of the ship, now that he had a moment to himself. He weaved through the crowd and headed toward a spot between two vendor booths, so he could configure his scanner to scan for the stabilizers, and its primary elements—citricite and triokin compound. While the triokin was common enough, the stabilizers used a special mix of that and citricite, creating a unique signature.
He started to pan the scanner around.
“Your friends went that way,” the female at the booth next to him said. She was older, with white hair and blue-gray skin. Wrinkles on her face but her eyes were sharp.
