Condition Evolution 2: A LitRPG / Gamelit Adventure by Sinclair, Kevin (black female authors txt) 📗

to inspect. Like he’d said, the wound was gone, now I just needed the suit to repair itself.

We set off down the street back towards the Fulinast Strike when Ember nudged me. “The first thug had nine senlar and a few arlars on him. With what we just earned we now have forty-three senlars and four arlars. We’re in the money. Now, let’s go and find a pilot.”

I nodded in agreement, but added, “After we’ve something to eat.”

“Damn right! My stomach thinks my throat’s been cut,” she laughed.

We had a meal, then spent a few hours going from bar to bar with no luck. In the end we had no choice but to admit defeat and head back to the ship for the night. We agreed it was better than a hotel, mainly because it was free. If you didn’t include the docking fee, which we’d be paying, anyway. It seemed about the safest place to sleep too.

It wasn’t until we got back on board that I remembered the food synthesizers were empty. I mean, we’d had a big ass meal once we had money, but I could have definitely eaten again before bed. I sighed, but accepted it could wait until the following day. We went to bed after an exhausting day of landing a spacecraft we couldn’t even fly and trawling bars for pilots. Not to mention adding two more kills to my ever increasing tally.

The next morning, we spoke to the supervisor about getting the ship refueled and restocked. He hummed and hawed, looking at a pad with a schematic of our ship. “Two senlar each. For fuel and synthesis materials.” he declared.

“Four senlar! Are you kidding me!” Ember screeched.

“No, no. Sorry. My mistake. I meant two senlar for both.” He’d obviously tried to take us for the fools we were, but Ember’s reaction made it clear we knew enough. Even though we didn’t. She was totally bluffing.

“Super. Make it happen,” she smiled, as we headed off to hit the bars again.

We weren’t relishing it after yesterday, but needs must when the devil drives. There were a few tentative positives, but they soon lost interest when we told them we were travelling to the Fystr Empire. “Shaun,” Ember stopped me on the street between our fourth and fifth bar, “no one’s taking us back to Earth here. We should really rethink this whole thing.”

“What else can we do?”

“Maybe we need to make more money first. Perhaps get a better ship?”

“A different ship. Why?”

“Shaun, that ship is shit. You know it’s not supposed to rattle, right? I mean, it’ll do for now. Only, I don’t want that ship to be the only thing between me and a quick space funeral.”

“I suppose I can see your point. Even so, how would we be able to get another ship?”

“I don’t know. Maybe do some jobs in the area to earn some money, then find a crew, or at the very least learn to fly the damn thing. I wonder if we can get any missions here. I dunno. Even delivering messages, or maybe mercenaries for hire. You’ll make a killing.”

“Ha! Real funny. Let’s lay out what you’re saying here. You think we won’t find an opportunist, mercenary, alien pilot to fly us halfway across the galaxy in a rust bucket that probably won’t make it back to Earth. Which is either surrounded by advanced Fystr war ships, or is a desolate wasteland reduced back to the Stone Age?”

“We could try to find Ogun?”

“Not for me. I really did like the guy, Ember, but I just don’t trust him anymore. This is the second time he’s deserted us. I wouldn’t leave anyone behind if I could help it.”

“Well, we’re normally massively outmatched. If we go by your logic we’d have all died on Earth because Ogun wouldn’t leave anyone behind.”

“He’s proven to me twice now that we are expendable. Now, all I am saying is I don’t ever want to be in a position where you’re expendable.”

“Or you,” she replied.

“I couldn’t give a fuck about me, but no one is putting you in danger without giving you full support and, as it stands, I only trust me and Havok to guarantee that.”

“You big softie. I doubt we could find them anyway. Even so, I’m happy being with you. You're right about one thing. I know you have my back,” she said, leaning into my arm.

“Maybe we’ll come across them again. I’d like to see Mick and Gus. They’re pretty stand-up guys. Still, you’re right. For now, we need to focus on surviving and building up some money.”

She gave me a firm nod, “Well, let’s find a job, then maybe we can find a pilot.”

C11

Outcasts

With our fresh outlook and tactic change, the next bar we went into actually yielded results of a kind. We were told that the docking area had multiple job boards. “How did we miss that?” I said to Ember.

“Cause we can’t fucking read alien, dipshit.”

“Oh, yeah. Good point. So, what are we gonna do about that?”

“Something will come up. Always does around you.”

We went back to the docks and walked past the entrance to go in the other direction. There we saw what we guessed were job boards. We walked over and started perusing them, instinctively pretending we could read the lingo and that we knew exactly what we were doing.

After a few moments, I looked over to Ember and grinned. She tried to avoid my gaze, but I saw a smile creep across her face before she turned to me laughing. “Well, we looked like we knew what we were doing there for a minute,” she chuckled.

“Yeah, but come on. This is bloody gibberish. At this rate we’ll need to hire a translator to read this shit before we can get a job or any crew.”

“Did you say you need a crew?” a lean, muscular, orange skinned alien asked.

There were a number of horns protruding from his head and he had a ragged look