The First Nova I See Tonight by Jason Kilgore (best ereader for pdf and epub TXT) 📗

rubbed his arms to stay warm. He'd definitely found the hub of activity. There were so many people milling about, in fact, that he had to watch carefully lest he bump into them. In this place, that could lead to the sort of trouble he didn't need right now.

Stalls lined the corridor. To his right was a food vendor. Fresh-roasted meat of some mammalian creature hung from hooks along the edge. He inhaled the scent of it, his mouth watering. Also displayed in the stall were baskets of pickled striped mushrooms from Tesla. Off to the side were dried spike-tailed Orgrossian lizards (a favored snack for Reptilocs, but poisonous to humans) and live fire maggots wiggling in a basket (a must-have snack for Corthians and Tau Cetians, eaten like popcorn). Just five chits for a dozen!

Dirken bought a couple skewers of the roasted meat without asking what animal it was, one for him and one for Yiorgos, and continued down the corridor. To his right was a heavily-guarded stall openly selling drugs that were illegal in most systems. The many different pills and potions were neatly labeled and bagged. They even had "Black Hole," a thick, tar-like narcotic that worked on Pleiadeans the same way that opioids did with humans (though "Black Hole" was immediate death for humans). There was also "Eros's Finger," a viscous, clear liquid which, with only one drop taken straight or mixed into drinks, would make the user horny enough to screw anyone or anything. Dirken had once seen a human man take it and immediately start screwing a Globoscian — a blood-red, gelatinous species with translucent skin, free-floating organs visible in the interior, and numerous eyes that wander around the thin membrane of its skin. Since Globoscians don't have any orifices (they reproduce by budding, eat by absorbing through the skin, and excrete waste through a mucus-like slime), Dirken still wondered how the man pulled it off. The Globoscian, for its part, merely tried to wobble away, amoeba-like.

The floor shook. Dirken froze as the goods in a nearby stall swayed and rattled. But the mini-quake was over before he even realized what it was. Everyone else barely reacted, apparently used to such little quakes in the comet. He composed himself and tried to act like it was nothing.

Gnawing on one of the skewers of meat he'd bought, he spied a weapons stall and wandered in. Two Pleiadean guards with pulse rifles watched him carefully, but Dirken ignored them. A Reptiloc with a black cloak stood behind the counter, an array of large knives and swords to his left, and a wall display of rifles and blasters behind him. A thin security field shimmered in front of the weapons.

The Reptiloc adjusted a translator necklace, then spoke to him, his words initially coming out as a swirling, high-pitched hiss and crackle that no human could reproduce, but it was translated by the necklace into metallic Terran. "I see you have a Gree-tech blaster. Impressive! But old and battered, it is. Perhaps I could interest you in trading up to a new Jen'torian Tempest?" He gestured to a chrome-like blaster on the wall behind him, slightly larger than his own. The tip of the gun had a radar-dish appearance. "Instant incineration, and just as powerful as that old blaster on your hip, it is. Illegal in most systems because of its power!"

Dirken took another bite. "No thanks," he said with a full mouth. "I'm attached to this one. But I need a couple more power packs for it."

"Hmm. Those are costly. Also highly illegal in most systems, they are. But…." He paused as he seemed to size up Dirken. "I happen to have three of them. Are you paying in United World chits?" Dirken nodded. The Reptiloc continued, "Four hundred chits each, but I will give you all three for ten hundred."

A thousand chits for three Gree-tech power packs was a decent deal. But haggling was part of the game. "A thousand chits? I paid less than that at Greely Station. I'll give you eight-fifty."

The dealer made a hacking sound and rolled his eyes. "That would be stealing, it would. But prepared am I to be reasonable. Eight hundred fifty if you also sell me those." He pointed a cracked and yellowed claw at Dirken's wrist.

Dirken looked down at his forearms. "Oh, these bracelets?"

"Not bracelets," the dealer rasped. "I know they are mirror armor."

Dirken pressed the button on one of them and it expanded into a full vambrace that covered his forearm with mirrors to deflect laser fire. "You have a good eye," Dirken said, "but I think I'll keep them for now." He pressed the button again and it refolded back to a bracelet.

"Pity. Then nine-hundred fifty for the power packs. My last offer, it is."

Dirken eyed something else positioned on a shelf under the guns. "I'll pay nine-fifty if you also throw in one of those stun grenades."

The Reptiloc made a high-pitched whirl. "Again with the stealing! With that, the price goes to eleven hundred."

"One thousand… ten-hundred, and not a chit more."

The Reptiloc blinked his nictitating membranes. "Very well, Terran. But you take this one." He reached under the counter and placed the power packs on top… along with a neon pink stun grenade the size of a deck of cards.

Dirken groaned. "Fine." He handed over the currency and took the items. He could just see himself in a pitched battle with pirates and throwing a hot pink grenade in their midst.

Leaving the weapons stall, Dirken checked again for anyone following, then stepped over a dried pool of pink blood, hardly looking at it as he gawked at a brothel. Standing outside were a human man, shaved hairless and wearing only a red thong and a collar attached to a leash, and a Rigellian woman, her skin red- and yellow-hued, her eight ventral flaps beckoning to him. She looked his way with unblinking eyes arrayed around her pear-shaped head. "Come here, sweetheart," she said in perfect