27. THALIA

Ahane’s first paycheck arrived several sleeps after we’d found the indoor ship storage yard (sleeps was easier to understand than days, because there was no natural cycle, at all, to the casino-stop) and it didn’t even seem like Site Master had tried to fuck him on it. The expected deductions for the towel and soap and a few other small necessities, and leaving the expected net.

Which was crummy pay, according to Ahane, but what was the going rate for short-order cooks at a diner like this? We didn’t have any other expenses. It was pure profit.

The Site Master didn’t seem to be in the business of being a good boss. Hadn’t seen him since he’d told Ahane don’t kill the customers. He hadn’t asked why we’d been in the hangar. He’d called Ahane up to his office to gripe about the water consumption, but Ahane had said cleaning and given the success of the cat-food meatball special, the Site Master had been in a good mood.

“You know what I don’t get,” I told Ahane as he verified that we hadn’t been scammed out of a penny we weren’t expecting to be deducted, “is why he’s letting us basically make free money. He knows we don’t have any expenses aside from soap. If this is such a sweet gig, why didn’t he have a line of cooks waiting for the free room and board?”

Things like keeping the kitchen clean and the hours of operation seemed to be strictly optional. The menu was up to whatever Ahane could cook from what the Site Master had shipped in. The hours were whenever we had finished cooking until whenever we ran out of food. The Site Master didn’t seem to care as long as there was regular service and no one died.

Sure, it was work, but I literally had nothing else to do with my time. I cleaned up after each service while Ahane went to wrench on the smuggle-shuttle.

Ahane cocked his head towards me. “Because the pay is terrible and we’re off-beacon and off-network.”

“Sure, but as far as I’m desperate and have nowhere else to go type employment, we aren’t being exploited nearly as much as I’d expect.”

Ahane scratched the underside of his jaw with the tip of his tail. Then he took off his apron. “We should go to the casino.”

I was desperate to get out again. We’d walked the concourse a few times, but Ahane was still paranoid about letting me out in public, and after the third time, it had become depressing the same as any indoor flea market with the same vendors shilling the same overpriced junk week after week.

But Ahane suddenly having a bit of change in his pocket and a desire to go hang out among dancing space-ladies and blinking lights? Red flags everywhere. “Why?”

“Because I think I know what those ships are about.” He pointed his tail in the general vicinity of the hangar.

“And we’re going to find the answer to life, the universe, and everything in a casino? Bold suggestion, Red. Bold suggestion.”

“I think the casino is the trap,” he said. “That, and I need to figure out how to procure parts for the shuttle.”

“So you’re going to walk right into a trap.”

“Yes. With you.”

“Not sure how that improves your odds.”

“Because you’re a Human under all your wraps. And I know you like to get out.”

“Because I’m Human is usually the reason that I’m not allowed out in public.”

“Humans are rumored to be the most unique and powerful latent psys in the galaxy, and your perception may be useful.”

“…excuse me. What did you just say? No, I’m not.”

A tormented sigh. “Do you want to go out or do you want to argue?”

“Why not both?”

“Why did I even ask…”

“Fine. As long as you promise you’re not pissing away your paycheck.”

Ahane gave me his best long-suffering-prince look. “I am only going to put a few credits on the hook as bait.”

If we came back broke, I was going to introduce Ahane to his new life in a findom relationship.

The casino was about asbusy as it always was, which was to say: pretty busy. The dancers outside were the taproot lady and the dancer who had been on stage before, and working it on stage was the cockroach. Taproot Lady ignored us and the other dancer laughed at her in a series of melodic full-body toots while giving me a meaningful wink. The people inside were a mix of regulars and some new folks.

Ahane went to a small booth in a shadowy corner. It was staffed by an articulated (but not the same species as the Site Master) and they and Ahane had some sort of exchange which involved Ahane pressing his talon against a pad and being passed a tray of small items in assorted day-glo colors.

Ahane took an open chair at one of the rainbow 4D chess-looking game tables. The other four players grunted/chirped/glug-glugged acknowledgement of his arrival in a sort of dead-souled way that gave me they all come here eventually vibes.

Ahane set his tray down, then pulled me onto his lap.

I squeaked, flailed, flopped, and my ass hit his thigh in a plop.

He supported me with one arm while arranging his pieces on the table. The other players seemed pretty pissed, but Ahane ignored their reaction.

I shifted to make myself more comfortable on his thigh and shoved my calf right into his junk. Oh, was that soft bulge not just his thigh? My mistake.

Shove.

Ahane coughed once.

I whispered through my mask at his ear, “Your balls make a lovely foot rest.”

“That’s not your foot.”

“Oh, you don’t want it to be,” I whispered, leaning my calf into his bulge, “And they don’t want you here.”

One of the players, a taproot covered in body hair the color of wheat, said, “Not your mate, eh?”

This seemed to make everyone else grunt/chirp/mpht in agreement.

I whispered to Ahane, “How do I say no, I just use him for sex?”

Ahane’s lips quirked. “She just uses me for sex.”

Jerk. Stealing my line and all. But nobody at the table seemed to know what to do with this revelation. The brewing hostility transmuted into how the fuck do we respond to that combined with I am uncomfortable. Ahane shifted his one hand to easily support my back and wrap around to my hip while he placed his pieces on the stacked boards.

The game seemed to be a wicked combination of chess, checkers, go fish, and poker, all on a multi-tier game board of translucent material engraved with geometric shapes that contained symbols. It caught the glow from the pieces. The goal seemed to be to take the other players’ pieces…sometimes? And sometimes trick them into taking yours? Or getting your pieces to certain positions on the board? Or in a certain arrangement on the board? Or to be able to swap pieces from the piece-pool off to the side?

I was not nearly stoned enough to understand what the fuck was going on.

These guys would have been shitty poker players back on Earth. It was obvious when someone was bluffing, and obvious when someone was stressed out or upset or giggling on the inside or thought they’d figured out one of the other players. But everyone else seemed totally oblivious.

Maybe it was part of the game.

I snuggled into Ahane’s chest and unconsciously ran my hand along his chest up to his thick shoulder. The wraps on my fingers dulled some of the sensation, but touching him still felt magical.

Best fidget toy ever.

Ahane’s tail curled around my ankle under my cloak. The tip brushed my inner shin, soft and feathery, then started to slowly move upwards. What the hell shape was that?

One of the players apparently lost all his pieces (into the pool they went) and he stormed off with an angry sob/curse. One of the bouncers approached him, offering him a strange, graceful dance of feelers around the shoulder, but the player swung his longest arm at the bouncer with a fuck off gesture.

The bouncer twirled his upper legs in a way that chilled me and made me sit up a little straighter.

The second bouncer now tried with an even more please, sir, have some more gesture with his feelers, but the player swung again and kept walking.

Now the second bouncer twirled his legs while the first skittered back to the shadows.

The chair was quickly taken by a regular with the body of a bronzed god (he literally looked made out of bronze, plus had eyeballs all over his body and horns that wrapped around his head in a halo) and a soul that had been sold to the devil at least a few thousand years earlier. Every single eye looked dead and sunken. More chicken pox scar and less biblically accurate angel. I’d only seen him once before in the diner, although I’d seen him lurking in the shadows of the concourse by himself, doing a full-body stare into the nothing outside.

Another player soon was “out” despite having pieces left. They were bad pieces and worth nothing. He left them behind on the table. The first bouncer tap-tap’d up just like before, and this time, the guy hesitated and listened.

My instincts instantly went no, no, don’t listen! What are you doing! You shouldn’t be listening to the cockroach!

The guy obviously didn’t want to listen to whatever the cockroach was telling him.

Some more waves of the feelers and twirls of the upper legs. It all seemed sympathetic and cajoling. After a moment, the guy turned around and walked back to the table. A third member of staff glide-tapped out of the shadows and deposited a fresh tray of pieces, and then dumped the old tray into the pot.

“Compliments,” this third cockroach said, with a twirl of the feelers and a quick bob of the upper body.

One of the other players made a glug glug at the returning player, while the biblically accurate angel looked at the pot like his not-so-merciful divine master had just dangled salvation in front of him.

The cycle repeated itself: every time someone busted, the staff went through the feeler-dance. Often, the player turned around and returned to the tables. Sometimes, but not always, the pieces that they had abandoned were returned to the pot, which delighted everyone else at the table, while the most elegant of the roaches murmured compliments.

“Leave?” I whispered to Ahane in 25XA.

Ahane shifted his gaze in my direction.

“Leave.” I stated again.

He finished up his turn, gathered up his pieces and tray, and shifted me off his thigh. He flicked his tail at the table in a bye gesture—they barely acknowledged him—and someone took Ahane’s spot.

We headed to the booth to return the tray, when one of the bouncers approached us for the feeler dance.

“Modest and tidy.” My translator supplied context that the bouncer’s statement was not a compliment and came with cowardly implications.

Ahane grunted.

The bouncer glided to block Ahane. “There’s no need to cut the play short, Cook.”

“I am not paid well enough to set it on fire,” Ahane replied dryly, but he didn’t push past the bouncer and instead inclined his shoulders like he was listening.

I hammed it up by shaking my head. Nope. Not paid well enough at all.

“If it is more you require, that is an easy arrangement.” The bouncer produced one of the small biometric pads. [NO EASY TRANSLATION AVAILABLE]

What the fuck? No easy translation available? When did my translator get lazy? And since when did my translator have a fucking lazy mode?

I poked it angrily.

[VERY TECHNICAL SHIP COMPONENT DATA, NOT RELEVANT TO CONVERSATION, SYNAPTIC OVERLOAD MAY RESULT]

What.

The.

Fuck.

Did my translator just say I was not tall enough to ride that ride?

Ahane hadn’t responded immediately, but it was obvious that the bouncer was offering him some kind of credit or advance. I tugged Ahane’s arm.

“Very easy, Cook,” the bouncer trilled. The slight emphasis on Cook made me shudder with the sinister, creepy, so close vibe.

Ahane brushed the pad aside.

Once back in the kitchen, I shoved back my hood. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were thinking about doing it. You know what, I don’t know better.”

My wagon was hitched to Ahane’s, and he didn’t get to get us into debt because I couldn’t fucking talk without risking getting tossed off the asteroid.

“I was considering it to see what was on the other side.”

“What did he offer you? My translator refused to tell me. Said it would overwhelm my brain.”

Ahane’s scales rushed like clouds. “I have never heard of a translator doing that. There are modified translators for small children, but most children don’t get them at all.”

“Well, mine did. So what the fuck was the arrangement he offered you?”

“Parts off the shuttle,” Ahane said.

“Ship parts?” I echoed like the idiot the translator believed I was.

Ahane nodded. “Non-essential ship parts.”

“You weren’t seriously considering it.”

“Only to see where the trail led, but then I decided I can draw a reasonable conclusion without it.”

“So someone busts out at the casino and the bouncers offer them credit. That’s what we saw in the hangar. That’s why there are people who never leave.”

“The parts I saw removed from the ships in the hangar—and what was requested from me—wouldn’t render a ship unflyable.”

“It’s a trap,” I said.

Ahane nodded, scales grim.

“But there are more ships in that hangar than warm bodies here. And that’s before we get to ones in the junkyard. Is he buying the warm bodies next? Like I know where you can work off this debt and try to get your ship back and they end up in mines or some cockroach sweatshop?”

Ahane’s hide tensed, flattening his scales slightly. “Or they abandon their ships here and leave as crew or cargo on another ship. The Site Master takes the entire ship as payment on the debt and considers the matter concluded.”

That was what this place’s business really was. The casino was the trap. All casinos were big sparkly boxes intended to separate people from their money, but this place’s casino was a portal into you can check in, but you can never leave. You got in deeper and deeper, and they took more and more ship parts, and you kept doing the deal over and over, hoping that the next game round you’d win and start to dig yourself out.

Ahane looked at the kitchen. “And we are part of it.”

“We get paid for the food.” I collected payment when I set down the plates. I didn’t have the ability to extend credit.

“Do we? The Site Master maintains the accounts. Think back to the customer I had to discipline. The one I was warned not to kill.”

“But the Site Master wants his profit from the food. If he was trying to milk the poor bastards, he’d jack up the prices. But he hasn’t. Folks have to eat.”

“Exactly. They have to eat. Food is a fundamental right in the Gestalt. Using starvation or contaminated food to torture prisoners is a Zero Crime. Using hunger to exploit someone is a Primary Crime. Gestalt Special Enforcement pays a good bounty if you turn in someone who is exploiting hunger.”

“Good enough that someone would have ratted this place out long ago?”

Ahane nodded. “The Site Master is from a graceful court. I don’t believe he’d lower himself to such behavior, no matter how profitable.”

That explained why the Site Master had needed a Cook and hadn’t asked many questions when we’d trundled up. It explained why he’d allowed the little cottage plate industry to crop up before our arrival. It explained why he didn’t exploit us. He had mouths he had to feed. Ahane and I weren’t a basic amenity.

We were gears in an orphan crushing machine.