- S p h 1 n X O 7
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- Honorable Member
Foreward
I've been writing this story for a long time. Tried uploading this thing multiple times, only to be intercepted by rereads which delivered nothing but dissatisfaction and also disturbances by others and technological problems. In the end, I'm pretty glad that those incidents happened. I'm happy with what I got, although I can still probably spend another month heaping more stuff onto this.
So please sit down and enjoy yourselves. Grab some popcorn and ice-cream. Please leave feedback and tell me what you guys think.
Thanks.
Believe.
The word echoed in my mind, ingeminating as it ricocheted along the hindered spaces of my aching head, blithely mingling with other conflicting cogitations that sought to overarch. The final muddled coalescence in the end, completely opposing my wishes, threatened to climax into one hell of a serious, wracking migraine.
I needed money. For the mostly unskilled, the perhaps most effortless way to gain currency, was to gamble or rob; the latter a slight overboard for some. I watched them; a hodgepodge of differing species, humans, kig-yar, the rest, all clamoring on the sides of the fighting ring, throwing down credits in a lascivious whim. The place was feculent, the inhabitants no different, riveted to the spectacle above that was being performed for a duo of reasons; a test of strength and skill between rivaling races, and ultimately, their viewing pleasure. The harsh reciprocal instincts for combat were ingrained within every being, and no one hesitated to satisfy their urges. Not in a place like this, anyway.
Unbeknownst to most of the drunken mob, there was a third, hidden deal that determined lives intertwined in the mix.
Money.
Not pitiful amounts swapped here, but quantities extending to thousands. Money held in its thrall the lives of billions. Everyone depended on it; everyone wanted more of it. It created hierarchy; the incompetent creatures here were a prime example of the lower tiers of society. On some colonies, the homeless line the streets while the rich swagger past wearing an arrogant moue. It causes crime, it causes chaos, yet in that despicable mess, it still had the ability of buttressing a life.
And in places like these, fortunes were won and lost.
So I sat here, in a sweaty, humid room whose primitive cooling device, rudimentary even on this world - an air-conditioner -, had broken down, surrounded by pirated trophies and the sour, musky perfume that wealthy kig-yar favoured so very much, conversing pointless banter that mostly, was redundant.
The kig-yar grinned at me. Her large, bulbous eyes were unsettling.
"How about upping the price?" She flashed her teeth.
I shook my head. "It should do."
She shrugged. The luminous purple glow, discharged vigorously from an overhanging bulb, was not entirely phosphorescent; a pall tainted the radiant nimbus, casting her in a tenuous conflict between light and shadow. She was thin for a kig-yar, the chiffon robes flitting across her body, wiredrawn, flimsy, although underneath she was swaddled in decorative garments. Her name, Farh-Yat, was metronymic, originating from a number of previous kig-yar matriarchs.
They were all similar, in appellation and in appearance, but that wasn't important. What was important was that like her predecessors, she was damnably rich.
Dangerous, too.
Her beak more elongated than most, her skin smoother than the more scurfy exteriors that most of her kind possess, she was hailed as a great beauty among her peers. While I couldn't say she attracted me in any way whatsoever, and hopefully not any other human, - although such cases have been heard of - she was definitely distinguished compared to the rest of her avian race.
Beneath us, in the dank, dark common room that housed a bar and hosted illegal boxing matches, the crowd cheered. Humans, my own kind; they and kig-yar dominated the area. They made fools of themselves, shouting and cajoling, gasconading and picking fights. Smeared infrequently throughout and convened in isolated circles, sangheili. Unggoy served the patrons, careless and spilling more liquid than they dispensed. They breathed freely from twin cylindrical tanks clipped to their abaft, their precious methane untarnished from the choking gag of exotic leaves, wafting from the mouths of dazed patrons. I certainly didn't have that luxury.
Farh tucked a pipe into her jaws; it was a curiosity, how it managed to fit its stem into a gaping maw bristling with fangs. But she was better than most; they were relatively in order, but most astoundingly, comparatively clean white.
After a moment, she exhaled headily. The smell was strong. "How many fighters have you brought?" she asked. The inquiry hung in the air; it was not laced with contempt, and I startlingly felt that it was an authentic question.
"Four," I pulled out a cigarette, striking it alight against the wooden armrest. I might despise the clogging stench of varying smokes, but nonetheless the calming sensation of an average cigarette was enjoyable.
"Humans?"
"And sangheili,"
Farh barked a laugh. People complain that a kig-yar's expression is hard to differentiate. I find that remark absolute rubbish. "You bring a small number for a substantial amount of money. My fighters are good, too." She had little concern over offending me. She wasn't the one who scrounged for credits. The dowager of her family, ruling six entire districts of the current seven, credits gush into her banks and coffers everyday through smuggling and trading in the black market, where she tugs the strings of nearly every significant trader.
To aptly moniker a planet all of which have the potential to sustain millions and provide endless opportunities in a single word is a brash and brazen move, but to haughtily title one in a negative manner is the action of a presumptuous, impertinent youth. But Gilgamesh, a hub for felons and outlaws, deserved no praising paragraph. It was a tremendous waste. Oh, it appeared promising at first, but with closer inspection revealing the dense magnitudes of volcanic activity and swaths of infertile soil, the co-existing empires had already diverted their attention to other worlds. Gilgamesh's exclusion from terraforming had me perplexed, too.
I needed to get off this hunk of rock.
To spend your life on a backwater world was despised by most; to me, it was unbearable. I was native to Gilgamesh. I had only tantalizing catches of the outside. For all its flaws, it had appealed to me rapidly, with its refined community and modern upkeep in technology. My home was shunned and overlooked, receiving only unsanctioned, antediluvian goods that were erroneous in the first place.
I wanted out. When the infectious excogitation planted its slithering roots within my brain's recesses, it burrowed deep, lodged. The fantasy of heading to another planet, any planet, - and oh God wish me luck if it were an Inner Colony - plagued me, and with me as its ambassador, I recruited my small, aspirant band. With my four eager followers, two of my own species and sangheili twins, we embarked on our fateful odyssey to escape this hellhole. After peregrinating here to Ninlil, a polymorphous, self-proclaimed capital, whose denizens were no more than congregations of mobsters and malefactors and malnourished citizens, we inaugurated our journey with tentative steps.
"They are good," I replied curtly. Farh could field a small army, but her hand-picked elite held an infamous reputation for brutality. Most only lingered briefly; the position was challengeable. The corollary was that if you lost the job, your life was queued up next, if it wasn't already snuffed out in the process. The sangheili pair, Kuthra and Karee, was the beacon that I adhered to; the former, specifically. They knew combat; embraced it. Their prideful race still valued themselves as the pinnacle of warrior prowess. Their uncle taught them, they say.
"He was good."
"Good enough?"
"Good enough."
"What about your father? Did he teach you?"
I had received no answer to my query. I was not acquainted with sangheili tradition, but I had heard how they were sired by their maternal uncles. The humans, Baird, Keanu, were both autodidacts, born and annealed in the slums. I trusted them. More or less.
It would be asinine for me to wring out a rational reason for the humans to fight; to chance their lives in the ring. They would not win. I had kiboshed the concept; reflecting it from every angle, every side. But they were pertinacious, obdurate. I had acceded to their insistence, and regretted it promptly.
I peered through the begrimed window. Two unggoy tussled in the ring, forgoing their cultured pretenses, degraded into barbarism. They bayed and bawled; sordid savages. In the ceilings' corner, perched on a beam, yanme'e heckled, cradling small, twinkling azure bulbs that really served no proper motive than illumination, cheerfully ambling beside speakers blasting flip music. Their passion for light bordered on derangement; the lot were all unmutuals.
I shifted in my seat. It was incommodious; I was unused to the alien softness of the worn leather. My hands were clammy, and my clothes stuck to my skin. The heat was asphyxiating.
[Edited on 10.15.2011 4:18 AM PDT]