"Get the hell out of here, Calmos," a voice drawled from behind the bar.
The bartender, a thin man with a poorly dyed beard, was staring back at him with an all too familiar grin. It had been thirty years since they last saw each other, but here he was — a mirror of his past self, only far more wrinkled — Captain Garfield fucking Pates.
"Patey!" Saul said, taking a seat at the bar, ignoring the sneer on the man's face.
"You've a lot of nerve walking into my bar, Calmos." He said. "I'll be pale if you think you can sit and drink here. Swore I'd kill you if you came around again."
"And when was that, Garfield?" Saul asked. "Let the past wither, lest you wither with it."
"I've done my fair share of withering, as you can plainly see," Garfield sniffed.
"Plainly." Saul didn't object. It was apparent that the man had fallen far.
It had been three years since Saul last crossed paths with the now ex-captain. The two had been serving aboard the TMN Diggory, a modest medium-haul freighter of the Terran Merchant Navy tasked with running goods and passengers between Turanda – back before the planet's repatriation and rebranding to Dromunsk – and the Herd world of Horus. During the mission, their ship had been contracted into running a particularly sensitive haul that neither Saul nor the Captain had been fully aware of at the time.
One of the contract stipulations installed an Admiral Gleenson as commander of the Diggory in place of Captain Pates. Bridge Officer Saul Calmos managed to drive a further wedge of disrespect between the Admiral and the Captain and ensure his own promotion to Lieutenant, the Captain's forced retirement, and ultimately Saul's posting as the new ship's commanding officer after the cargo was safely delivered and the mission closed.
Saul understood why the Captain might hold a grudge.
The establishment in which Saul now sat was nowhere near as dishevelled as Pates. The walls were lined with polished marble, as were much of the corridors of Flotsam Station. Despite that, the bar exuded little sense of sophistication.
"You self-righteous scab," Garfield said stoically, gesturing to the insignia on Saul's jacket arm. "I see you've been promoted again in my absence."
He shifted his gaze to eye the rest of the jacket, which Saul routinely wore unbuttoned and open. "And I see you still can't bring yourself to follow Sovereignty Naval regulation. You always were a slob."
"Come on now, Patey," Saul said, "like you could act this suave. Besides, those airless Sovvos don't come around this lonely station much, being way out on the edge of the Federation boundary."
"True. Most of the trading is over on the Vasser side of the Terran Sovereignty, tending to their golden alliance. It's any wonder why I picked this bar to weather my days." Garfield said, sliding a frosted glass over to Saul's side of the bar.
"And weather you have. Look at you, Patey. You're nearly bones and dust! Health plan out 'ere must be far inferior to those precious regulations you still cling to." Saul smiled and took a swig from the mug.
"Hah! Still a twit," Garfield scoffed. "It's those regulations that keep you where you are and I where I am."
"Then why cling to them so dear? You sorry sonofabitch, can't you see that you're being shit on out here?"
"No need to get yourself excited, Calmos," he said with an eye roll. "Without those regulations, without tradition, it would be a quick hop and a skip into the black for our beloved Empire."
"Empire?" Saul choked. "Careful now, Garfield. You're starting to sound like me. I believe those empirical sad-sacks prefer the term Councillior Republic."
"Go tell that to your wet nurse, Saul. There's no one out here to hear us. This station is lifeless aside from the regular scum that enter my bar. That and the rockies. It's why I picked this hole in the midst of black; to be away from the Sovs and the likes of you."
"Those scum are how you pay your bills."
"Not quite. Those scum hardly pay. It's the rockies that pay for this station. They provide the mineral lifeblood that keeps the lights on. It's the scum's job to move it into human-occupied space—into the Sov, into the Herd Federation, even into Odeni Space. You see, without this station, this hub, the rest of civilised space, starved of resources, spirals into villainy. It's those regulations you so quickly dismiss that keep the whole machine oiled."
"The rockies — the Fels — do all that? Keep the whole thing humming? I've heard stories, but coming out here is a different thing entirely."
"As a race, the Fels are ingenious. Relations between them and us humans aren't always spot-on, but matters of trade keep us a community. Just this day, I heard the TMN Par Abadd brought aboard a cargo hold full of quell diamond. Can you imagine? The hold of that ship must be worth more than this entire station, personnel included!"
"That much quell diamond– you're sure?" Saul said, surprised.
Quell diamond, mined on the subterranean levels of the station, was said to be the hardest pre-dark matter substance in existence. It wasn't attainable by any other race; not the mercantile vass, nor the militaristic quisabar, the enigmatic alfen, and certainly not a species with such unevolved mining techniques as humans.
Due to their particular mineral-like physiology, the Fels possessed the ability to shift between states resembling both liquid and solid rock. This — along with earning them several unbecoming monikers such as rockies, stonemen, golem — imbued upon them the unique ability to commingle with solid matter, filter out, and retrieve different elements at will.
In the hands of any other species, this superpower would likely result in the complete destabilisation of the whole interspecies economy that existed across the Rift Quarter. Still, the Fels possessed a particular trait to balance this out.
As a species, they possessed no individual identities. Like other species, they existed in separate bodies, but unlike others, they saw little need for personal possession and identity. They subsisted entirely off of one fractured collective mind, all acting in concert. This single-mindedness made diplomacy and interspecies relations difficult.
"I'm sure," Garfield said, interrupting Saul's lapse into deep thought. "Now I know you're not thinking of anything stupid, are you?"
"Stupid? No, no…" Saul said, his mind still drifting. "Tell me. Has the quell left the station already?"
"Stop getting stupid ideas. I have a reputation to keep. A bit of bar banter is all you'll get, and even that is severely pushing it."
Saul thought for a moment.
"You said it was the TMN Par Abadd that brought the haul in, yes?"
"Yes," Garfield nodded. "Captain Hpefry at the helm, I do believe."
Ideas rocketed through Saul's head. How many guards lifely encircled the ship's berth, what he could do with a haul like that, what the street price for the quell would fetch. But ultimately, he had no way of moving such a commodious commodity off the station.
"Tell me, what berth is the Par Abadd in?"
"And why would I tell you that?" Garfield's eyebrows dropped.
"I've got a mind to chat with this Captain Hpefry. Maybe see the haul for myself," Saul said. "You know, just to bask in it and all."
Saul finished his beer, stood and adjusted his jacket, careful to avoid buttoning it.
"So long as that's all you're after…" Garfield continued, "but you misunderstand. I meant, why would I tell you? 'Far as I can remember, I still loathe your very existence. I see little reason to offer you such enticing information."
"You have me there, old friend. I don't suppose a proper payoff would change your mind?"
"A proper payoff..." Garfield paused. "If it's a payoff I were after, I'd get that now just by turning you over to the authorities."
Saul cocked his head, waiting for the but.
"But…" There it is, "but I could be persuaded... provided the right level of apologetics."
"I know, I know. What'll it be, a swig of vaske? A good home-cooked malatang? Or, I know. A ticket off this rock?"
"Please, Calmos, what do you take me for? Surely even a shit captain such as you must know what I'm to ask."
Saul raised an eyebrow. He hadn't expected it would take a turn like this. Having served as a halfway decent captain ever since his posting, Saul had only ever toyed with the idea of breaking free of Sovereignty influence, even if it were just to taste a little independence from their rule. Now, however, he found himself skirting the edge of a cliff. He knew Pates was about to ask for his ship back.
"Well?" Saul started. "I can see by that look on your face that whatever it is you're about to ask is begging to leap out. So, let's have it."
"A job."
"A job?" Saul cocked his head. He hadn't expected that.
"A posting," Garfield affirmed. "And a ticket off this rock, as it were. You see, as far as this bar has led me from life's problems– problems you're at the helm of causing, it's just not comparable to a life in transit. I demand– I ask, despite our past, for a posting amongst your illustrious crew. And no tricks, no tossing me to janitorial and the like. You give me a ticket off this station, a posting on your crew under an assumed name — gods know I can't use mine, for obvious reasons."
Saul considered for a moment. Accepting this man's offer hadn't come with the strings he expected. Was he to give Pates station aboard his ship for little more than the small infraction of forging Sovereignty documents?
"Consider it–"
Pates cut him off. "–and make that dayshift bridge crew. None of that nighter garbage."
"You want to serve on the same command, same crew, same shift as me? Me, the one who you say sabotaged your career in the first place, marooning you in this far corner of human space?" Saul knew there had to be a catch but didn't care to press it. Perhaps it was reckless or stupid. But maybe he felt he owed the man a little bit of recompense.
Saul took a step toward the bar and reached for Pates' arm.
"Consider yourself once again crew of The Sovereignty's finest; TMN Diggory." He said, shaking Pates' arm. "May the gods have mercy on you and yours."
"Yes, well..." Pates said, noticeably astonished. "Well, when I woke today, I hadn't considered this shitty bar wouldn't be the death of me."
"That makes two of us. Well, maybe not the part about the bar," Saul said. "Now, what can you tell me, Bridge Officer Pates?"
"Make that Aiden. Bridge Officer Francis Aiden. It was my mother's name."
"Aiden? No, it couldn't be. Your mother, she wasn't Francine Aiden?" Saul asked in astonishment.
"The very same. It wasn't my father who was the officer in my family. A story for another time, perhaps."
"And you feel this name is less conspicuous?"
"You've a point…" Aiden said, considering. "Dammit to hell. The woman died when she caught wind of my dishonourable discharge, something my father had never forgiven me for. If I can give her one thing in this life, it'll be this. The name stays."
He cracked a bottle of something expensive-looking from the top shelf.
"The name stays!" Saul echoed.
The two lifted their glasses in a toast, the clink ringing out in the midafternoon emptiness of the bar's imitation oak panelling. Aiden choked back the bit of dry vaske liquor he was noticeably unaccustomed to drinking despite his tenure behind the bar and managed to get out two words: berth forty-four.