Vanguard Word Update

2k words

***

“I know just the place,” Samiha replied with a grin.

-xXx-

“Welcome back, miss Samiha!” Jim called, hurrying over to the reception desk and holding out an arm. “And mister Cadell, Sir, always a pleasure. What’s it been, two months, three?”

“Somethin’ like that,” Cadell replied, shaking the offered hand. “How’re things?”

“Oh, couldn’t be better! People talked about your visit that day, place became sort of a tourist attraction. Very few quiet days for us since, as you can tell.”

He gestured behind him to the restaurant floor, where a decent chunk of the tables were packed with couples and groups, hurrying waiters bouncing from the kitchen to the hungry diners. The clanking of cutlery and the reserved conversations completed the dining experience.

“See you’ve brought some friends along as well,” Jim noted, peeking over Cadell’s shoulder. His eyes grew larger. “With another Balokarid to boot! I must have been doing something right.”

Kazlu held out her hand, introducing herself. “It is nice to meet you, Jim. This is Hunter, and the big one is Kurtis.”

“The whole gang’s here, eh?” Jim asked. “What’s the occasion? Alliance give you a secret mission?”

“We are being deployed,” she said. “that is all I can tell you.”

“I get it, classified stuff and all that,” Jim agreed, tapping at a display behind the counter. “Table for five, yeah?”

“Looks a little busy,” Hunter noted. “Damn but it smells good in here.”

“Don’t worry, I’ve been planning on your return,” Jim explained. He picked up a stack of menus. “This way, please.”

The six of them weaved between the tables, Jim bringing them towards the reaer of the establishment. The chatter died down as the customers began to notice the aliens, men and women pausing with forks hovering before their mouths as they turned to ogle.

“Here we are,” Jim announced, pausing before a booth. It was different from the other seats, as though it had been scooped from a completely different restaurant. One half of the booth was normal, but the other half had cushions that were pushed further away from the table, the seating deep enough it rivalled the size of a mattress, the backrest upscaled to support a sitting giant. It didn’t take a genius to know who it was made for.

“I recall you saying you would make some accommodations,” Samiha commented. She slid into the upscaled booth, propping her elbows on the backrest and testing its firmness. “It’s been too long since I’ve sat in a proper seat. You’ve done well, Jim.”

The owner placed his hands proudly on his hips, beaming at her.

The rest of the team slid into their seats, Cadell finding himself between Samiha and Kazlu on his right, and his human counterparts on his left. As Jim handed out menus, Kazlu reached into singlet, producing the little baggie that contained her reagents. She didn’t try to conceal it, in fact, she placed it on the table, addressing Jim directly.

“Do you mind if we smoke in here?” she asked. “On Balokar, it is customary to calm ourselves with reagents before deploying to battle.”

“Well…” Jim mused, scratching his chin as he debated. “Usually we don’t permit smoking in here, but since business is booming thanks to you… I’ll let it slide. I can always turn up the scrubbers to reduce the smell.”

“We appreciate you, Jim,” Samiha added.

“What kind of owner would I be if I didn’t respect your customs?” Jim replied. “I’ll be back in a few minutes to take your order.”

They thanked him, Jim departing to greet another group that had wandered inside. When he was out of earshot, Cadell turned to Kazlu. “Was all that true?” he asked. “Is smoking before a fight a custom?”

“Of a sort,” Kazlu replied. She opened the baggie, pulling an odd device from the neck. It fit snugly in her palm, about the shape of an eggshell with a rounded face on one side, and a small nozzle on the other. There were dark holes placed randomly over one face of it, about five in total. The alien device looked a little bit like an ocarina to Cadell. “Hundreds of different spices and herbs grow on the homeworld,” she added. “some help us to relax, whole others induce states of hyperfocus and concentration. The latter are consumed before battle, while the former are for more casual settings.”

“Hyperfocus?” Hunter asked. “What’s that, like dialling all your senses to eleven?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Samiha replied. “You reach a new state of being under the effects. You hear every grain of dancing sand, see the dunes shifting over the course of a day, smell the dew on the rocks. Our pilots used them extensively during the skirmishes against the UEC.”

“Combat drugs,” Kurtis mused. “I can see it now, two whole Clans stimming up before a war. Imagine how brutal that would be…”

“By the sands, no!” Kazlu squawked. “The Clans do not war against eachother,” she chuckled, as though the notion were ludicrous. “Our reagents are only a temporary measure to enhance ones abilities, we only used them for things like competitions or races. It assists us greatly in combat, true, but that’s only a recent application, as we’ve never been in a conflict before.”

They watched as Kazlu slid open a panel on one side of her ‘ocarina’, producing a pinch of leaves from the baggie. She placed the herb inside, shut the panel, then flicked a small mechanism. A low bubbling could be heard from inside the casing.

“You tellin’ me there’s never been a war on Balokar?” Cadell asked. “Not even for resources? Water can’t be the only thing that’s scarce on a desert planet…”

Samiha answered while Kazlu busied herself with her device. “Some Clans have had disagreements, yes, but open conflict? That is mankind’s answer to disputes. Certain parts of Balokar are more generous than others, and the Clans trade what they cannot produce themselves. To war over so much open desert is just not feasible. A Clan would waste more water than they would gain if they were to aim to overpower another territory.”

“But you’ve got laser guns and weaponised starships,” Hunter pointed out. “Plus shielding tech. That doesn’t sound like peaceful technology to me.”

“Isn’t it?” Samiha argued. “Lasers to hunt wild game, starships to break down asteroids for resources, shields to supress the heat of the sun? Yes, they translate well enough to war, but its origins were to aid life, not take it.”

“Hadn’t considered that, good point.”

“It is ready,” Kazlu announced. She help up her smoking device in one hand, opened her beak and angled the nozzle end toward her mouth. tThere was a sound like a decompressing airlock, and little plumes of smoke began to rise out of the holes that Kazlu hadn’t covered with the pads of her fingers. She inhaled, paused for a moment, then exhaled, her breath visible as a deep grey smog.

“Ahhh, that is good,” Kazlu sighed, her feathery head twitching in excitement. “Shame we cannot smoke like this back in the quadrant.”

“It’d give the Alliance a bad image if the military part of the station was blazing it up,” Hunter said. “What’s it taste like?”

“See for yourself, friend,” she replied, sliding the device across the table. Hunter caught it, lifting it up like the strange, alien artifact that it was.

“How on earth do you work this thing?”

“Hold it like I did, palm on the casing, fingers on the other side. Yes, like that. It’s got its own heating element, so all you have to do is aim the flute towards your mouth, and inhale. You can control the strength of a pull by covering those holes there. Block more for a stronger drag, less for a weaker one. I wouldn’t recommend plugging more than two, however, I wouldn’t want you going crazy with herb.”

“I can hold my own, this isn’t my first rodeo,” Hunter said. He followed her instructions, holding the nozzle of the ‘flute’ between his lips. He drew out the herb, then released his breath, a rough circle of smoke sighing into the air above their booth. “Huh, tastes like blackberries.”

“How did you do that?” Kazlu asked, watching the smoke-ring dissipate.

“Advantages of having lips, Kaz,” Hunter chuckled. “C’mon, Kurt, your turn.”

Kurtis started his own pull, Samiha reaching into her vest, taking out her own flute and starting to prepare it. Kurtis tried to form a ring of smoke, but he choked and coughed halfway through it, much to the amusement of Hunter.

“I can never get it right,” Kurtis grumbled, sliding the flute back to the alien. “And that’s not blackberry, it’s grape.”

“Get out of here, grape? How’d you get grape from that?”

“This particular herb confuses the senses a little,” Kazlu explained. “Everyone experiences a different flavour on their first try. Humans too, it seems.”

“Let Cadell have a go,” Hunter said, waving at Cadell. “Let’s see what he thinks.”

“Not today,” Cadell replied. “Someone’s got to get you all back to the bunks safe.”

“Probably lemon, cause you’re souring the mood,” Hunter said. That got a couple of chuckles from the others, Cadell shaking his head in mock exasperation. The fumes kind of smelled like cinnamon, but he kept this to himself.

With Samiha’s own flute prepared, a cloud of vapours quickly formed above and around their booth, earning them a couple stares from their neighbours. Deep down Cadell did feel a little left out of the fun, but at least Jim came back soon enough to take their orders and hand out their drinks, so Cadell had at least something to occupy himself with.

The team was subdued by a pleasant buzz, which was chased by idle conversations of no particular topic. Cadell noted that Samiha and Kazlu had switched back to their native dialect, chattering away like songbirds. Every time Hunter or Kurtis picked up a flute, Kazlu would snicker under her breath, while Samiha just lazily smiled.

Cadell took a swig of his drink, pausing before addressing them. “What are you two laughing about?” he asked.

“Kazlu was making some odd comparisons,” Samiha answered, Kazlu nudging her friend with a feathery wing.

“Odd? How is it odd? They’re aliens, but still…”

“You just answered your own question, Kaz.”

“Someone want to fill me in?” Cadell interrupted, trying to regain their focus. They had smoked enough that their mannerisms were shifting a little. He hoped they wouldn’t cross the line that Jim had drawn for them.

“We have – had – places on the colony for these kinds of settings,” Kazlu explained, picking up her flute to demonstrate. “Smoking, drinking, socialising. They are not the most… professional places, but if you wanted to getter better acquainted with someone, all between friends of course, you went there.”

“Why’d they have a bad rep?” Cadell asked. His question seemed to amuse Kazlu, the alien taking another draw from her flute.

“She’s saying you go there to impress upon a male,” Samiha explained. “It’s where the bachelors can usually be found.”

“Oh,” Cadell said, embarrassed that he hadn’t caught her meaning sooner.

“Usually, but not always,” Kazlu added. “You’d be fortunate to find just one eligible male, since only one male is born for every four females. But now…” She chuckled, taking a gulp of her drink. “Now we’ve got three males in our booth, and they’re partaking of our herb, and we have more water than we can ever imagine. It’s nothing short of downright decadence...”

“It is strange, when you put it like that,” Samiha muttered, taking another pull from her flute.

“Is that how Balokarids find a guy?” Cadell asked. “Take him out to a dive bar, get him drunk on water and weed?”

“If only one were so lucky,” Samiha replied, looking up at the hanging vapours wistfully. “Our males are critical in who they choose as a partner. Courting takes months, years to complete, and even one wrong impression can result in them looking elsewhere. There are outliers like what you describe, males who purposefully seek out temporary companionship, but on the whole they require a lot of work.”

“Which isn’t surprising,” Kazlu added. “If I had to raise hatchlings for the rest of my life, I’d draw out the prelude as much as possible. No wonder our pilots got so excited during the aftermath of the Nebula…”

“How so?” Cadell asked. Again, his questions seemed to amuse the pair of birds, Kazlu especially.

“He is a naïve thing, isn’t he?” Kazlu muttered.

“It’s a little endearing, in a way,” Samiha replied. They weren’t exactly whispering, but there was an effort, albeit a very poor one. She spoke up when she continued. “After the battle in the nebula concluded, your human pilots and our own started to mingle, and it seemed some of their chemistries matched. Rumours of a couple of pilots taking human partners circulated around the Clan, but since we weren’t part of the air groups, that’s all the information we had.”

“And it had only been a few weeks since our species formally met,” Kazlu said. “Weeks. Taking someone to your bed in that short a timeframe… It’s unheard of.”

“Woah, woah, woah!” Hunter chimed in, silent up to this point. “You’re saying a bird banged a human?”

“Several did, so I’ve been told,” Kazlu replied, nodding. “Perhaps it was because of the debt our Clan owed you that started the trend, or perhaps they found qualities in you that they enjoyed. Our pilots are the most outgoing of the Clan members.”

“What about you two?” Cadell prompted, gesturing with his glass. “You been around humans longer than most. We have any good qualities?”

“I suppose I would find you all cute,” Kazlu admitted shamelessly, the herb loosening her lips. “The short statures, the little noses, you’re not so far removed from our own males. Minus the feathers, of course. What do you think, Samiha?” she added, shooting a grin at her counterpart that came off as mischievous.

“I think…” Samiha trailed off, looking at the three humans pointedly. Her gaze lingered on Cadell’s a little longer than the others, but that was probably just the fumes dulling his senses. “I think that I need something to eat. Where is Jim?”